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In large part from Alan Stevenson, A Rudimentary Treatise on ... Lighthouses (1850).

Dickens probably wrote or heavily rewrote the following portions of 'Cain in the Fields': from 'This was the young' to 'pretended embrace' (p. 147); from 'There is no escape' to 'learn it!' (p. 148); from 'But, perhaps the most striking' to 'two thieves' (p. 149).
Dickens may also have rewritten or added to the following sections: the opening paragraph; from 'Twelve years have passed' (p. 151) to the conclusion.
In addition, Dickens seems to have interpolated phrases into passages primarily by Horne (for example, the ironic asides in the first two-thirds of the paragraph beginning 'Of domestic poisonings,' p. 148).
The psychology and punishment of murderers - the subject of this article - had fascinated Dickens from his earliest days. Sketches by Boz (1836), Pickwick Papers (1836-1837), and Oliver Twist (1837-1839) - as well as many of his later novels - demonstrate this fascination. His periodicals reflect the same interest. In Household Words, in 'The Finishing Schoolmaster' (17 May 1851) - to cite only one example - he demonstrated how the very office of hangman exerted a baleful, brutalizing effect. Dozens of essays took up similar and allied matters. One of those allied matters - again dealt with in the article below - was the practice of holding executions in public, a practice Dickens vehemently opposed. In 1846, in five letters to the Daily News, and in 1849, in two letters to the Times, Dickens argued brilliantly against capital punishment and public executions. Here he continues that campaign.
Public executions were finally abolished in 1868.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

By Coleridge.

Dickens probably wrote a substantial share of the 'Little Exhibition' portions of 'The Great Exhibition and the Little One.' His hand seems most evident in the following passages: from 'As it is impossible' (p. 357) to 'Amen' (p. 358); the paragraph beginning 'Compare these' (p. 358); the paragraph beginning 'In the Little Exhibition' (p. 359); from 'In China, there are' (p. 360) to the conclusion.
Dickens seems also to have emended other passages.
Three years earlier (24 June 1848), in the Examiner, Dickens propounded the superiority of the West to the East in a paper entitled 'The Chinese Junk,' a paper which described the exotic Chinese craft which had just come round the world to be put on display in London, and a paper which incorporated many of the instances and images developed below. In 1848 there was no Great Exhibition to use as a condensed antithesis of the 'Little Exhibition' (Dickens' name for the Chinese Gallery in Hyde Park Place and the Chinese junk at Temple Stairs), but in both essays the 'Stoppage' of the East is contrasted with the 'Progress' of the West (the terms are Dickens', see p. 360) - a view of East and West that Dickens, along with most of his contemporaries, regarded as self-evident.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.