Sketches by Boz - Brossura

Dickens, Charles

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0140433457 ISBN 13: 9780140433456

Casa editrice: Penguin Classics, 1996

Riassunto

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.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

Walter Bagehot once remarked, Dickens wrote about London "like a special correspondent for posterity".

"The first sprightly runnings of his genius are undoubtedly here," wrote Dickens’s friend and biographer John Forster.

L'autore:

Charles Dickens (1812-70) was a political reporter and journalist whose popularity was established by the phenomenally successful Pickwick Papers (1836-7). His novels captured and held the public imagination over a period of more than thirty years.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Penguin Classics
• Data di pubblicazione: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0140433457
• ISBN 13: 9780140433456
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 688
• Redattore: Walder Dennis