Somebody's Luggage

A head waiter finds a guest's abandoned luggage stuffed with manuscripts and, after seven years, sells them to a publisher — which is Dickens's excuse for a set of stories, including His Boots, one of the best things he wrote about a child. Sent at twelve to work in a blacking factory while his father sat in a debtors' prison, Dickens made these Christmas numbers of All the Year Round with a stable of contributors, and this one is the funniest. Fifty-nine plates, from William Powell Frith to Edvard Munch, trace the era's public spectacle and private streets, the same mix of crowd and solitude Dickens works in these stories.