A great deal has been written about Dickens and childhood, his own and those of the famous child characters in his novels; but less critical attention has been paid to his early writings for the simple reason that very few seem to have survived, and those few have often been controversial. Dickens himself left records of his early creativity and the way his child's mind transferred the magic of favorite books like the Arabian Nights and Tales of the Genii onto the external world: "Common flower-pots are full of treasure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees are for Ali Baba to hide in". (1) It was only a matter of time before this creative experience was recorded in writing, again in imitation of the exotic eastern tales. He tells us that his first attempts at authorship were "certain tragedies achieved at the mature age of eight or ten," that he then produced with other children and "represented with great applause to overflowing nurseries" (Kitton 1900, 194). Forster records that one of these plays, "Misnar, the Sultan of India," was particularly popular (Life bk. 1, ch. 1); (2) but there has been no sign of an extant manuscript of "Misnar" or of any other childhood plays that the young Dickens wrote for family entertainment. Over the years, however, a few poems and several dramatic fragments from his late teens have come to light, and we are indebted to a number of Dickens scholars who have contributed significantly to our knowledge of their location and authenticity. (3) This essay is a survey of the field, designed to record, first, the romance and, secondly, the reality of Dickens's early writing--before the triumph of Sketches by Boz and The Pickwick Papers established his authorial voice and set him firmly on the path of a writing career. It is part of a larger research project on nineteenth-century juvenilia, in which Dickens's early writing experience will be compared and contrasted to that of his contemporaries in order to explore the imaginative life and the creative practices involved in establishing the voice and authority of the young writer.
