Dickens probably wrote the following portion of 'The Doom of English Wills: Cathedral Number Two': from the opening to 'without twopence' (p. 27).
Dickens seems also to have added touches to the remainder of the piece.
Concerning this article, Dickens wrote to Wills from Broadstairs on Tuesday, 17 September 1850: 'I will be at the office [of Household Words], please God, at eleven on Friday Morning; and if we have, as I fear we must have, in default of anything else, the second Will article in the No. I will write the introduction then and there.' Whether Dickens wrote the introduction 'then and there' is uncertain, but that he wrote the introduction seems clear.
Some of the facts and ideas in the introduction (and a number of the phrases incorporated therein) are sketched briefly in the two canceled paragraphs that conclude 'Ecclesiastical Registries,' Dickens' early manuscript version of the first of 'The Doom of English Wills' articles. A variorum version of the manuscript is printed in Appendix B [of Stone, 1968].
For the first article in this series, see 'The Doom of English Wills.'
Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.
