[Charles Kent], from an unsigned review of Mugby Junction, Sun

‘It delighted me to find you so taken by the Xmas No.’, Dickens wrote to Kent (14 December 1866)—adding that ‘Yesterday Evening Mugby Junction was 11,000 past the 200,000 and it was 40,000 and odd ahead of Doctor Marigold [the 1865 Christmas Number of All the Year Round] at the same date after publication’. The date Kent cites (1845) should of course be 1843. Dickens devised three public readings from this Christmas Number, but they did not repeat the success of Doctor Marigold.