‘The Heart of John Middleton’

‘The Heart of John Middleton’ was EG’s third story in Household Words. It was published in the number for 28 December 1850 (2, pp. 325–34), and followed closely on the heels of ‘The Well of Pen-Morfa’ (see p. 157). As with its predecessors, the title was Dickens’s suggestion. Reading the proofs a fortnight before publication he wrote to EG enthusiastically, ‘I think The Heart of John Middleton – that’s the name I have given it – a story of extraordinary power, worked out with a vigor and truthfulness that very very few people could reach’ (CD Letters, vol. vi, p. 238). As had been the case with ‘Lizzie Leigh’, he was an active editor up to the eleventh hour, suggesting that she should not kill the hero’s wife (‘an unnecessary infliction of pain upon the reader not justified by the necessities of the story’) but instead alter the last twenty lines, allowing Nelly to recover, see her daughter grow into a woman, and exercise her influence for good over her husband. EG was apparently willing to make the changes but her letter arrived after the number had been sent to press. ‘You can put a pleasanter end to the next one’, Dickens told her (CD Letters, vol. vi, p. 243).