The publication in 1863 of the first stories in this series, then entitled Mrs Lirriper's Lodgings, happened when Dickens felt happy and highly productive. Dickens edited the journal, All The Year Round, which offered him the opportunity to publish his own stories as well as those of a number of then well-known writers, though most of them are now unfamiliar to us. In the case of Mrs. Lirriper, he began her story and that of her lodgers, then passed the pen on to other writers to continue her tale. These writers mean little to us now but Elizabeth Gasksell, Andrew Halliday, Edmund Yates, Amelia Edwards, Charles Collins (brother of Wilkie), Rosa Mulholland, Henry Spicer, and Hesba Stretton were popular in their time.

Dickens then completed the tale with his own conclusion. So popular proved these Lirriper stories that he followed them up with Mrs Lirriper's Legacy, another series of short stories, again taken over by his crew of writers and then finally concluded by him.

They are all a joy to read although not all are of the same quality. Yet, they capture the period perfectly, and give us a view of Victorian England in a less gloomy tone than his novels do. They are, in fact, charming and make you wish that Dickens had given us a few more of such tales. We also get a very favorable glimpse of France when Mrs Lirriper and her main lodger, the Major, travel there with their grand-and godson to claim a strange legacy.

In these stories sometimes the voice is that of Mrs Lirriper, at other times that of the Major, and also of various lodgers who recount their tales so that the Major can write them down for posterity. They are sometimes happy, sometimes sad, some are spooky, others are full of fancy. The language is beguilingly Victorian, and makes one wish that today's writers paid more attention to not just the content but also the sound of English. Today's writing is often much too sober, even cold in tone, and seldom contains the beauty that the Victorians infused into the language.

There is, of course, a common thread through all of the stories, but what that is I don't want to reveal. Mrs Lirriper is one lady who must be experienced without too much advanced information. Just let yourself be drawn into these tales and the reason for why they are being written down. Enjoy the fine details in these stories, which are never boring. It takes writers of special talent to dwell on detail and yet not make you want to skip even a single word, let alone a line. And, what is most important, even the lesser tales have voices that can be believed. They don't talk down to the reader, and they never diminish the characters.

Dickens followed up Mrs Lirriper with a much darker series of stories in All The Year Round under the heading of Mugby Junction. Here, too, he writes the opening tale and three others, but then lets Halliday, Collins, Stretton and Edwards complete the story of the Junction.

The first of these Mugby Junction tales were published in 1866, 18 months after he had the unfortunate experience of being in a train derailment. Dickens had loved trains, but the derailment had shaken him up badly. It hadn't stopped him from using trains. Yet, whenever he journeyed from then on, he frequently alighted several stations ahead of his destination and walked the remaining miles. "My father's nerves never really were the same again," his daughter Maisie stated after his death in 1870 when talked turned to the railway accident.

These tales, too, are highly descriptive, drawing the reader into the Victorian world in the shape of the imaginary Mugby Junction. As the name implies, they are stories connected to the railway and people who either use it, or live by it. Although dark for the most part, they also contain tender and happy moments. Some stories are filled with friendship, vengeance, and redemption, some with ghosts — imagined ones and those of haunted minds. These stories tell us how the railway can bring people's lives together, and also how it can tear them apart.

Like the Mrs Lirriper stories, these railway tales give us a different side of Dickens and of the writers he fostered in his periodical. They catered to the Victorian penchant for the slightly macabre, the off-beat, the sentimental — without being bathetic — and at the same time, their thirst for adventure.