This ninth volume presents about 1,100 letters, many unpublished, from the years 1859 to 1861. It records the writing of two major novels, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations ; the planning and writing of a substantial amount of the three Christmas numbers of this period, ‘A Haunted House', ‘A Message from the Sea', and ‘Tom Tiddler's Ground'; and the establishment of All the Year Round as a new journal to succeed Household Words . It also shows Dickens's delight with his new Kentish home, Gad's Hill.