ABSTRACT
The ‘sketches’ forming Sketches by Boz, Dickens’s first writings, began to appear at the end of 1833 and were published in book form by John Macrone (1809–1837), his first publisher, in February 1836. Pickwick Papers, published with Chapman and Hall, began serialization in April 1836, and a second edition of Sketches by Boz appeared that December. In January 1837, Dickens entered into an agreement with the publisher Richard Bentley and assumed editorship of a new monthly magazine, Bentley’s Miscellany, whose first intended title was The Wits’ Miscellany: it was not intended to be primarily a family journal. As a result, Oliver Twist began serialization in Bentley’s Miscellany in February: hence, Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist were being written together throughout that year, until Pickwick Papers appeared in book form in November 1837.
