¹³ There was disagreement among members of the firm about which novel should appear at Christmas. In the event, Adam Bede and Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, which was completing its serial run in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, were being set in the same type, and he was slow in returning proofs. On 26 November, John Blackwood wrote to George Eliot, ‘We are rather puzzled to get on just at present as “Adam” and “What will He do with it” are printing in the same type and from a want of return of proofs of the last there is about a ton and a half of Type locked up’ (George Eliot Letters, viii. 214).