Explore "Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens" by G.K. Chesterton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The greatest mystery about almost any great writer is why he was ever allowed to write at all. The first efforts of eminent men are always imitations; and very often they are bad imitations. The only question is whether the publisher had (as his name would seem to imply) some subconscious connection or sympathy with the public, and thus felt instinctively the presence of something that might ultimately tell; or whether the choice was merely a matter of chance and one Dickens was chosen and another Dickens left. The fact is almost unquestionable: most authors made their reputation by bad books and afterwards supported it by good ones. This is in some degree true even in the case of Dickens. The public continued to call him "Boz" long after the public had forgotten the _Sketches by Boz_. Numberless writers of the time speak of "Boz" as having written _Martin Chuzzlewit_ and "Boz" as having written _David Copperfield_.
Yet if they had gone back to the original book signed "Boz" they might even have felt that it was vulgar and flippant.