Going Astray

London streets, its people, its crowds, its buildings. It is Dickens's constant subject, from his early journalism, Sketches by Boz , to The Uncommercial Traveller , from his first novel, Pickwick Papers , to the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood . Going Astray: Dickens and London is a major new work of criticism that attempts a reading of Dickens's novels in the light of the study of London. Its guiding premise is that Dickens's novels not only use London as a background, but that they are ...