Dickens’s Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836 brings together fifty-four early sketches by Dickens that have never before been collected in this form. Each sketch faithfully reproduces its original version, typesetting features and printing errors included, just as they initially appeared and before Dickens heavily revised them (merging some, retitling others, removing characters and incidents and adding new ones) to create his first book, Sketches by Boz. Presenting both authorized and unauthorized versions of the sketches, this edition will enable today’s readers to encounter Dickens—with all his charm, wit, and insight—just as his first readers did some 175 years ago.

Hanna’s introduction offers sections on “Dickens’s First Literary Publication,” “The First Readers of Dickens’s Sketches,” and “Hidden Messages in Dickens’s Sketches,” while appendices identify characters unique to these fifty-four sketches and provide a chronological listing of all authorized reprints of Dickens’s sketches, as well as a bibliography and a glossary and index for explanations absent from comparable guides to Sketches by Boz.

With these materials now readily at hand in a uniform, painstakingly-edited text superior to the catch-as-catch-can realities of even the best electronic editions of nineteenth-century periodicals, scholars can now expand their understanding of Dickens’s early working process, as well as the materiality of his work. An essential addition to any collection of Dickensiana.