Sunday Under Three Heads

Under a pseudonym Timothy Sparks, the then 24 years old Dickens wrote a pamphlet entitled Sunday Under Three Headsin which he defended the people's right to pleasure, opposing a plan to prohibit games on Sundays. The pamphlet was dedicated (without permission) to the Bishop of London. It was published by Chapman and Hall on Friday, 8 July 1836. The full title is Sunday Under Three Heads. As it is; As Sabbath Bills would make it; As it might be made. It is written in three chapters. In this volume, Dickens talks of a quiet Sunday afternoon and the pleasure derived from a day off for the working classes.The pampered aristocrator the gloomy enthusiast cannot by possibility form an adequate notion of what Sunday really is to those whose lives are spent in sedentary or laborious occupations, and who are accustomed to looking forward to it through their whole existence, as their only day of rest from toil.