In 1847 Dickens was a world-famous author raking in profits from serial novels and Christmas books. At that time he wrote several versions of his earlier life, attempting to explain to himself and his vast public how he had transformed himself from an ill-educated boy sent to work at the age of twelve in a shoe-blacking factory into the toast of European letters. The inauguration of a cheap edition of his novels provided an opportunity to write new prefaces accounting for each work’s origin. For Pickwick Papers, his second title (1836-37) and first novel, he disclosed the beginning of his vocation as writer. William Hall, formerly a bookseller and in 1836 the partner of Edward Chapman in a modest publishing firm, arrived at Dickens’s rooms in Furnival’s Inn on 10 February 1836 with a proposal for the young author, known for his street sketches and tales published under the pseudonym “Boz.” It was to supply letterpress accompanying etched illustrations by the comic artist Robert Seymour, some of which had already been prepared to illustrate the story Seymour had in mind.

In Hall, Dickens reported, he recognized