The article forms part of All the Year Round's long-standing campaign against the Spiritualist Movement in Britain, and while maintaining the usual position of scepticism-cum-disapproval, demonstrates (as usual) the journal's continuing fascination with the theme. It has all the hallmarks of being instigated by Dickens, but the style is not his. It is attributed to sub-editor W. H. Wills in Jean Burton's Heyday of a Wizard (London: G. G. Harrap, 1948; p. 174), a biography of Daniel Dunglas Home, the Spiritualist and Medium whose lecture on 'Spiritualism, its Uses and Abuses'  at Willis's Rooms, 15 February 1866, the article roundly criticises (Wills's initials are given, incorrectly, as 'W.G.'). No evidence for the attribution is given; it is repeated in Letters 11, 226n., again without supporting evidence, but both sources are reliable, and in the absence of rival candidates, Wills's authorship seems a fair supposition.