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The germ of this article can be found in a letter of Dickens to Charles Knight of 26 March 1850 (Pilgrim, Vol. VI, p. 73) in which he describes watching a globe-maker at work and revolving in his mind 'some faint idea of describing him as a traveller who was for ever going round the world without stirring out of that small street'. In the event he applied the idea to the current rage for Panoramas and Dioramas, which had been given fresh impetus in 1849 by the great success of Banvard's Panorama of the Mississippi, already publicly praised by Dickens. For a detailed account of the Panorama/Diorama phenomenon, see Chs 10–15 of R. D. Altick's The Shows of London (1978), and R. Hyde, Panoramania! The Art and Entertainment of the 'All-Embracing' View, the catalogue of an exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London (1988–9).

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In large part from Joseph Kay's The Social Condition and Education of the People in England and Europe (1850).

Allingham noted in his diary for Sunday, 7 April 1850: 'A guinea from Household Words for "Lady Alice," with a compliment from Dickens—indicating that at this stage in its publishing history, the magazine paid at least some contributors in advance of publication: in this instance almost as soon as the make-up of the number was decided. Also that the some brief editorial acknowledgement accompanied the payment.

Source: H. Allingham and D. Radford, eds, William Allingham. A Diary (London: Macmillan, 1907), p. 58.