SOURCE: An introduction to Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens, Oxford University Press, London, 1957, pp. v-xi.

In the essay below, Holme praises Dickens's descriptive writing style in Sketches by Boz.

One evening in the autumn of 1832 the manuscript of a fictional sketch entitled 'A Sunday out of Town' was dropped 'with fear and trembling into a dark letter-box in a dark office up a dark court in Fleet Street'. Its author, describing the event to a friend, gives a picture of the sequel. We see him in a Strand bookshop, hurriedly searching through a copy of The Monthly Magazine. He pauses, gazing at the page before him. His sketch—its name 'transmogrified' to 'A Dinner at Poplar Walk'—is there, 'in all the glory of print'. Thrusting his way through the crowded Strand, the young Charles Dickens hurries blindly towards Westminster Hall where he may pace in solitude...