Esquisses de Boz

En 1836, Charles Dickens publie son premier livre, les deux volumes des Esquisses de Boz, recueil de nouvelles et d'esquisses de personnages et de lieux, dont la plupart avaient déjà paru dans divers journaux et magazines, sous le pseudonyme de Boz. L'ouvrage, dans sa version définitive publiée en 1839, contient cinquante-six morceaux, regroupés en quatre sections et subdivisés en chapitres : " Notre paroisse ", " Scènes ", " Personnages " et " Récits ". On trouvera ici réunis pour la première fois dans une édition séparée les douze récits composant la quatrième partie de l'œuvre. " Malgré la crudité juvénile de certains passages et un peu de gaucherie et d'embarras dans le style, Les Esquisses de Boz sont une expression caractéristique du génie de Dickens. En outre le livre contient à l'état embryonnaire toute l'œuvre future de Dickens comédie, sentiment, respect pour la vitalité des personnages, pour stupides ou limités qu'ils soient, habitude de l'hyperbole, don admirable des transformations linguistiques frappantes, notion d'un déterminisme social irrésistible par lequel le milieu urbain cause le triste sort des malheureux qui y vivent. " (J. Hillis Miller) Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz foreshadows his novels in its profusion of characters, its glimpses of surreal modernity and its limitless fund of pathos and comic invention. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with notes and an introduction by Dennis Walder. Published under the pen-name 'Boz', Charles Dickens's first book Sketches by Boz (1836) heralded an exciting new voice in English literature. This richly varied collection of observation, fancy and fiction shows the London he knew so intimately at its best and worst - its streets, theatres, inns, pawnshops, law courts, prisons, omnibuses and the river Thames - in honest and visionary descriptions of everyday life and people. Through pen portraits that often anticipate characters from his great novels, we see the condemned man in his prison cell, garrulous matrons, vulgar young clerks and Scrooge-like bachelors, while Dickens's powers for social critique are never far from the surface, in unflinching depictions of the vast metropolis's forgotten citizens, from child workers to prostitutes. A startling mixture of humour and pathos, these Sketches reveal London as wonderful terrain for an extraordinary young writer. In his introduction, Dennis Walder discusses Dickens's social commentary, his view of London and his imaginative mixing of genres, and places the Sketches in the tradition of eighteenth and nineteenth-century reportage. This edition also includes the original illustrations by George Cruickshank, a chronology, further reading, appendices and notes. Charles Dickens is one of the best-loved novelists in the English language, whose 200th anniversary was celebrated in 2012. His most famous books, including Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and The Pickwick Papers, have been adapted for stage and screen and read by millions. If you enjoyed Sketches by Boz, you might like Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, also available in Penguin Classics.