Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People.

While submitting contributions to the Monthly Magazine, Dickens formed his pen-name – ‘Boz’. He juggled parliamentary reporting (he was adept at shorthand) with creative writing, submitting additional ‘sketches’ to the Evening Chronicle, edited by his future father-in-law George Hogarth. Dickens was an excellent observer, and his Sketches by Boz include memorable descriptions of people and places, especially of London. ‘Thoughts about People’ is but one, ably illustrated by George Cruikshank, the ‘modern Hogarth’, who was equally secretive about his personal life (unbeknown to all, he had a mistress by whom he fathered 11 illegitimate children).

[Thoughts about People. Illustration by George Cruikshank, opposite page 90 from Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People.]