Sketches by Boz

London is waking up. Market carts begin to move through streets that were almost silent an hour before, shop shutters come down, and people with very different reasons for being abroad pass one another. In these sketches and short stories, the young Charles Dickens follows the city into its shops, theatres, offices and rented rooms, writing under the name Boz.

He is excellent company on an omnibus, where passengers keep changing and nobody can comfortably settle into a long story. A seat, a parcel or an awkward neighbour gives him enough material to make a journey entertaining. Elsewhere, parish officials take their own importance very seriously, and the preparations for a social occasion can become as elaborate as a public ceremony. Dickens notices the clothes, gestures and little claims to distinction through which people try to make themselves count.

His attention can also settle on someone almost nobody notices: an office worker who appears not to know how to spend a holiday, or a person whose hardship is lost in the surrounding bustle. The movement between amusement and unease gives the collection its range. Some pieces stay close to an observed scene; others become invented tales with their own casts and predicaments. You can read a few at a time, following a place or a voice without committing to a long plot. Together they offer the company of a walker who keeps finding reasons to stop, listen and wonder about the lives behind an ordinary window.