‘The Well of Pen-Morfa’

‘The Well of Pen-Morfa’ was the second of EG’s stories to be published in Household Words. It appeared in two parts on the 16 and 23 November 1850 (2, pp. 182–6; 205–10). Following the success of ‘Lizzie Leigh’ in March and April of 1850 Dickens wrote to her in July and again in August asking for another story. She had been suffering from a ‘spinal irritation’ in September, and forbidden to write much during this period. Dickens read her new manuscript in October ‘with avidity’, he told her, ‘as soon as I knew it was yours’, and professed himself delighted to have it (CD Letters, vol. vi, pp. 121, 143, 188). EG, writing to Lady Kay-Shuttleworth in November thought the story would be called ‘Pen-Morfa’ (Letters, pp. 134–5). As was the case with ‘Lizzie Leigh’, the final title was Dickens’s choice, and emphasised the place where the heroine had been lamed, and where she died. The story appeared in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in January 1851 as ‘The Broken Heart; or The Well of Pen-Morfa, A Welsh Tale’ (2, pp. 205–13).