Dickens aesthetic

To mark the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, the Condé Nast Traveller team suggest a literary trail of the City

From the pithy to the provocative, the classic book opener comes in many different forms. Hephzibah Anderson explores the art of the perfect first sentence.

Charles Dickens by William Powell Frith This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world in divers irreconcilable capacities—had been an officer in a South American regiment among other odd things—but had not achieved much in any way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was not up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of a friend who had died in the chambers, and had…

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. G.P. Putnam's Sons, NY, 1900. Binding designed by Margaret Armstrong.

Gabriel when he comes back to court years later.