NER Rediscovers Dickens

In its regular “Rediscoveries” section, the newest issue of Middlebury’s New England Review (v37 n4) features “Two City Sketches” by Charles Dickens. Editor at Large Stephen Donadio provides an introduction, noting that after the serial publication of The Pickwick Papers, “there was indeed popular demand for a second selection of sketches. . . The complete collection of some fifty-six pieces came out in 1839, by which time Dickens’s commanding presence on the scene had been securely established. In that 1839 volume, the pieces are grouped in four categories: ‘Seven Sketches from Our Parish,’ ‘Scenes,’ ‘Characters,’ and ‘Tales.’ The two city sketches presented here are the first two included under ‘Scenes’; they are taken from the illustrated Sketches by Boz in the Standard Library Edition of Dickens’s Complete Writings published in thirty-two volumes by Houghton Mifflin & Company (Boston and New York) in 1894.” NER  treats readers to several selections from its current print issue to read online, including these sketches by Dickens.