Note 29 to Chapter 5 of the author's Pegasus in Harness: Victorian Publishing and W. M. Thackeray, which University Press of Virginia published in 1992. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
The details were given by Ray in Adversity, pp. 261, 478. It is probably not true that the book was turned down by Blackwood's Magazine as Sir Theodore Martin inferred in his Memoir of William Edmondstoune Aytoun, p. 132. Robert Colby speculated that Thackeray may have intended it as a companion to Comic Tales (1841); Colby, p. 197; n.10.
Last modified: 4 April 2001