Mudfog is a fictional town created by Charles Dickens for his early work with Bentley’s Miscellany. The sketches are written in a very satirical tone, sometimes very funny and sometimes a little over-the-top, but always inventive and fresh.

The most enjoyable sketch, for me, was The Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble, in which a man becomes mayor and allows the honor to go to his head. There are some genuinely funny incidents and characters, including a drunk stuck in an antique suit of armor, and proof that pomposity looked exactly the same in Dickens’ day as it does in ours.

Dickens also has some fun with a meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything that contains some silly inventions and is an obvious take off on the blunderings of the very real British Association for the Advancement of Science. One of my inventions were spectacles created by Mr Tickle which allow the wearer to view in bright colors objects a great distance away, while obscuring objects nearby, because so often people are able to see things afar when they are blind to what is right before their faces. This blindness to problems at home is a theme upon which Dickens expanded in his later novels.

Having read a number of Dickens’ novels (won’t it be nice when I can say “having read all”), it is interesting to read his early work and see the development taking place. I was also very grateful for the background information provided by CozyPug, as I read this with theDickensians group, which put a great perspective on who Dickens was and what he was doing in his personal life at the time of these writings.



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Mudfog and Other Sketches includes seven shorter works which were published earlier in Dickens' career.

I. "Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble - Once Mayor of Mudfog" was published in the first volume of Bentley's Miscellany in January of 1837, which was before the first installment of "Oliver Twist", and in the original printing Oliver was from Mudfog. This story introduces us to the fictional town of Mudfog. The story is about Mr. Tulrumble, a man in search of applause for his thoughts, who is determined to get that in the office of Mayor of Mudfog, but then realizes he will not achieve his goal. This is an okay story, but not among Dickens'best.

II. "Full Report of the First Meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything" was published in October of 1837 (Volume 2) and the follow-on III. "Full Report of the Second Meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything", which was published in September of 1838 (Volume 4) are the two gems of this collection, and should not be missed. A great parody of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and Dickens is in great form.

IV. "The Pantomime of Life" (incorrectly listed as The Pantomine of Life in the Table of Contents) was originally published in March of 1837 as part of the "Stray Chapters" in Bentley's Miscellany. This is an odd little salute to pantomime's, in which Dickens declares is appreciation of them.

V. "Some Particulars Concerning a Lion" was another "Stray Chapters" entry from May of 1837 in Bentley's Miscellany. In this short story, Dickens puts up the biped lions of Regent-street or the fashionable world against the four-footed variety.

VI. "Mr. Robert Bolton: The 'Gentleman Connected with the Press' was from the August 1838 number of Bentley's Miscellany. Another odd short story where Mr. Bolton captures his audience's attention by relating the story of a grizzly murder.

VII. "Familiar Epistle from a Parent to a Child Aged Two Years and Two Months". The last of the stories, and the shortest one. First published in Bentley's Miscellany in March of 1839, it is actually about Dickens handing over the editor role of Bentley's Miscellany to Mr. Ainsworth, with two years and two months being the length of time which Dickens was the editor.

While the stories in this collection are a bit uneven, there are at least two which should not be missed. ( )

The Mudfog Papers were collected and published posthumously, drawn from Bentley's Miscellany which Dickens edited/wrote at the beginning of his career (and to which he contributed Oliver Twist). The first story "Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble--Once Mayor of Mudfog" is excellent, vintage Dickens loving satire of a man who becomes Mayor, gets increasingly inflated notions of himself, turns all of Mudfog against him, and then recants.

The second two items are mocking of intellectual societies, claiming to be the "Full Report from the First [and Second] Meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything." The Society begins with the consideration of a paper entitled "Some remarks on the industrious fleas with considerations on the importance of establishing infant-schools among that numerous class of society..." and then continues on to address such important issues as a survey of the literature children are reading, a proposal for the public provision of bears for amusement, and the amusing observation that "the total number of legs belonging to the manufacturing population of one great town in Yorkshire was, in round numbers, forty thousand, while the total number of chair and stool legs in their houses was only thirty thousand, which upon the very favorable average of three legs to a seat, yielded only ten thousand seats in all. From this calculation it would appear,-- not taking wooden or cork legs into account, but allowing two legs to every person,-- that ten thousand individuals (one-half of the whole population) were either destitute of any rest for their legs at all, or passed the whole of their leisure time sitting upon boxes." These papers generally sustain the interest, preview numerous Dickens themes from small-town grandiosity, pompous professors, and small-minded schemes that claim to be for the benefit of the poor. But it's hard to get too excited about them.

The remainder of this collection is a few miscellaneous items Dickens wrote for Bentley's Miscellany that are all rather thin, including a tribute to pantomime, a parody of a famous author parading about, and the like. The final piece is entitled "Familiar Epistle from a Parent to a Child Aged Two Years and Two Months"--which is Dicken's farewell to Bentley's after the same period as editor. ( )

The Mudfog Papers were collected and published posthumously, drawn from Bentley's Miscellany which Dickens edited/wrote at the beginning of his career (and to which he contributed Oliver Twist). The first story "Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble--Once Mayor of Mudfog" is excellent, vintage Dickens loving satire of a man who becomes Mayor, gets increasingly inflated notions of himself, turns all of Mudfog against him, and then recants.

The second two items are mocking of intellectual societies, claiming to be the "Full Report from the First [and Second] Meeting of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything." The Society begins with the consideration of a paper entitled "Some remarks on the industrious fleas with considerations on the importance of establishing infant-schools among that numerous class of society..." and then continues on to address such important issues as a survey of the literature children are reading, a proposal for the public provision of bears for amusement, and the amusing observation that "the total number of legs belonging to the manufacturing population of one great town in Yorkshire was, in round numbers, forty thousand, while the total number of chair and stool legs in their houses was only thirty thousand, which upon the very favorable average of three legs to a seat, yielded only ten thousand seats in all. From this calculation it would appear,-- not taking wooden or cork legs into account, but allowing two legs to every person,-- that ten thousand individuals (one-half of the whole population) were either destitute of any rest for their legs at all, or passed the whole of their leisure time sitting upon boxes." These papers generally sustain the interest, preview numerous Dickens themes from small-town grandiosity, pompous professors, and small-minded schemes that claim to be for the benefit of the poor. But it's hard to get too excited about them.

The remainder of this collection is a few miscellaneous items Dickens wrote for Bentley's Miscellany that are all rather thin, including a tribute to pantomime, a parody of a famous author parading about, and the like. The final piece is entitled "Familiar Epistle from a Parent to a Child Aged Two Years and Two Months"--which is Dicken's farewell to Bentley's after the same period as editor. ( )