ABSTRACT
This appreciation, in the opening number of the People’s Journal (which also contained a favourable notice of The Cricket), was in a series ‘The People’s Portrait Gallery’; Dickens was chosen to open it, as ‘the unquestionably most popular man of his day’. Howitt (1792–1879), editor of the Journal, was a prolific author and journalist; Dickens was on friendly terms with him and his wife Mary, and later invited them to write for Household Words.
