A brief account is here given of Dickens' literary career, which presents chronologically a review of his productions as they appeared.
The first of his literary efforts was the tragedy of "The Sultan of India," written in his precocious school-days at Chatham, when, if we except his Parliamentary journalistic work, nothing else was put forth until "The Dinner at Poplar Walk" was published in the Monthly Magazine (1833). The original "Sketches by Boz"—the first of which bore no signature—also followed in the Monthly Magazine. Other sketches under the same generic title also appeared in the Evening Chronicle, and yet others, under the title of "Scenes and Characters," were published in "Bell's Life in London" and the "Library of Fiction."
In 1836 a number of these fugitive pieces were collected into a volume, the copyright of which was sold to one Macrone for £100, who published them under the first and best known title, "Sketches by Boz." The familiar story of "Pickwick," its early conception and its final publication, is well known. Its first publication (in parts) dated from 1836-37. About this time Dickens had another bad attack of stage-fever, and wrote a farce, "The Strange Gentleman," the libretto of an opera called "The Village Coquettes," and a comedy, "Is She His Wife?" more particularly perhaps for amateur representation, in which he was very fond of taking part. "Oliver Twist," a courageous attack on the Poor Laws and Bumbledom, followed in 1838, though it was not completed until after "Nicholas Nickleby" began to appear in 1839.
At this time was started Master Humphrey's Clock, a sort of miscellany in which it was intended to publish a series of papers written chiefly by Dickens himself after the style of Addison's Spectator of a former day. It was not at first successful, and only upon the commencement therein of the "Old Curiosity Shop" did it take on in any sense.
Master Humphrey's Clock ran down with the completion of the novel, though this story, in company with "Barnaby Rudge," a tale of the riots of '80, was not issued in book form until 1848 and 1849.
The authorship of "Pickwick" was unknown by the great mass of the public until very nearly the completion of the work in serial parts. Much conjecture was raised, and a writer in Bentley's Miscellany published the following lines under the title of:
IMPROMPTU
"Who the Dickens 'Boz' could be
Puzzled many a learned elf,
Till time revealed the mystery,
And 'Boz' appeared as Dickens' self."
The other contributions made by Dickens to this periodical were afterward added to his published works under the title of "Master Humphrey's Clock."
Dickens' first tour to America followed the abandonment of the periodical in 1842. This event called forth the following verses by Tom Hood, entitled:
TO CHARLES DICKENS
On his Proposed Voyage to America, 1842.
"Pshaw! away with leaf and berry
And the sober-sided cup!
Bring a Goblet and bright Sherry!
And a bumper fill me up.—
Tho' I had a pledge to shiver,
And the longest ever was,—
Ere his vessel leaves our river,
I will drink a health to 'Boz.'
"Here's success to all his antics,
Since it pleases him to roam,
And to paddle o'er Atlantics,
After such a sale at home
May he shun all rocks whatever,
And the shallow sand that lurks,—
And his passage be as clever
As the best among his works."