Impressions of Theophrastus Such Book

The 37 pieces in this book were written in the 1860s, published in a weekly magazine/journal that Dickens ran, and later collected and printed in book form. They range fairly widely in theme and tone, but as Daniel Tyler argues in his introduction to the edition I read, they can be seen to make up "a volume-length consideration of how far (and to whom) sympathy can be extended" (xix). (In one essay I liked a lot, Dickens visits a boat about to depart England with hundreds of emigrating Mormons on board: he clearly isn't expecting to be particularly charmed by them, but clearly is.) Some pieces were moving, some interesting, some funny, others kind of a slog'I wonder if I might have liked this more if I'd taken breaks from it, but it was a library book, so I didn't.

Not surprisingly, I really liked the essays/parts of essays featuring descriptive passages about London, like this, from "Wapping Workhouse":
Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles of building belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts and vanes in small back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the India-vans lumbering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers' shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and quadrants, that I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least notion how to use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards Wapping. (19)

Or this, from "City of London Churches":
Whether I think of the church where the sails of the oyster-boats in the river almost flapped against the windows, or of the church where the railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above the roof, I recal a curious experience. (92)

Other high points included a really good outraged essay about the poor treatment of soldiers ("The Great Tasmania's Cargo"), a piece about being very seasick crossing to Calais ("The Calais Night Mail"), a piece about stories remembered from childhood, including stories that were terrifying at the time ("Nurse's Stories"), and a piece about walking in normally busy parts of London that become quiet on summer weekends ("The City of the Absent").