Acting with his friends and his children during the summer of 1857 in the Mr. Wilkie Collins' production The Frozen Deep, the first feeling occurred to Charles Dickens for a second historical novel. Such a tale was then a fancy, and the sadness and trouble of the winter of the year were not favorable to it. Toward the close of January 1858, talking of declining living conditions, it was again in his thoughts:
Growing inclinations of a fitful and undefined sort are upon me sometimes to fall to work on a new book. Then I think I had better not worry my worried mind yet awhile. Then I thin…
