This richly varied collection of observation, fancy and fiction shows the London he knew so intimately at its best and worst – its streets, theatres, inns, pawnshops, law courts, prisons, omnibuses and the river Thames – in honest and visionary descriptions of everyday life and people. We see the condemned man in his prison cell, garrulous matrons, vulgar young clerks and Scroogelike bachelors. A startling mixture of humour and pathos, these Sketches reveal London as wonderful terrain for an extraordinary young Dickens.