@jda@bookstodon@books You know more than me, having read the bio, but I understand that Dickens started as a police reporter and his early works: Sketches By Boz, Oliver Twist and Pickwick Papers, all benefit from some "reading between the lines" as he alluded to things he knew that he couldn't write straight out. Thomas summarizes long works like Mayhew's London Life, reports of vice committees and so on that illustrate the congested, abusive and creative London Dickens found so fascinating.