Sketches By Boz.

DICKENS, Charles.

$1,600.00

Item Number: 147629

London: Chapman and Hall, 1839.

First edition of the new edition of one of Dickens’ collection of short pieces. Octavo, bound in full red calf with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in five compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, marbled endpapers, with forty illustrations by George Cruikshank. In near fine condition. A very sharp example.

The sketches of urban life that make up Sketches by Boz first appeared in a variety of London magazines. “What impressed his contemporaries as much as the vivacity of his style was the way in which he was able to chronicle the lives of ‘the people’ even at the time they were first struggling to find social and economic expression. This was how he found his great subject, in crowd scenes, in streets, in the lives of people who are uniquely tied together, for better or worse, and who are part of the city which rises like an hallucination through these early sketches” (Ackroyd, 169).