Not identified. Keys's name appears three times in the Office Book, in each instance as the second among the writers' names attached to an article. The position suggests that Keys worked as reviser of the articles.

The second section of "South American Scraps", to which Keys's name (but also Wills's) is attached, Dickens damned for its violations of grammar and its unintelligibility (to Wills, July 23 1851: MS Huntington Library); Wills should not have let such disgraceful slovenliness appear in H.W.

Writing to Wills from Broadstairs on July 27, a few days after the appearance of that second section, Dickens stated concerning Keys (name omitted in Nonesuch Letters; reads Keys in MS Huntington Library):

"It is impossible to go on with that unfortunate Mr. Keys. I met him in the street the last time I was in town, and told him that if I could ever give him anything to do, I would. But that I saw no means or opening.

Pray explain to him that his condition can have nothing to do with him in the character of a contributor as between us and the public—that whatever goes into the Journal goes in for its own sake, and not through any interest of any sort—otherwise I should make contributors of a legion of clients, including all my poor relations".

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.