This is a past event
As part of the HUMBUG event, Dr Paul Schlicke will be giving a talk about Charles Dickens's first publication, 'Sketches by Boz'. The talk will be preceded by a showing of Michael Steele's short film 'Novel Performances by Dickens' about Dickens's reading tours and his appearances at Aberdeen Music Hall.
6.30pm - 6.50pm: Novel Performances
6.50pm - 7.30pm: Sketches By Boz
Sketches By Boz - Dr Paul Schlicke
Dickens’s first published imaginative writing appeared in newspapers and magazines between 1833 and 1836 and was collected in volumes in 1836 as Sketches by Boz. Although soon eclipsed by his later achievements and largely dismissed by readers thereafter (and by Dickens himself) as mere apprentice work, these tales and sketches created a sensation at the time and launched his career, months before The Pickwick Papers rose “like a rocket”.
Not only are the sketches of great interest in their own right, but because Dickens revised them extensively over nearly twenty years, they provide the clearest evidence we have of his development as a creative writer. They also offer a window on society at the brink of the Victorian era and attest to Dickens’s radicalism during the Reform era.
Dr Paul Schlicke, who is retired from the English Department of the University of Aberdeen, has been at work for many years preparing the authoritative Clarendon edition of Sketches by Boz, which is nearing publication.
- Speaker
- Dr Paul Schlicke
- Venue
- The Special Collections Seminar Room Lower Ground Floor The Sir Duncan Rice Library
- Contact
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Entry to the film showing and talk is FREE but you can reserve a seat by signing up on the evening. The HUMBUG event begins at 5pm.
For further information contact:
scc.events@abdn.ac.uk or call 01224 273049