Rachel Ray

Rachel Ray was written on commission for serialization in the magazine Good Words, but editor Norman Macleod rejected the completed novel in mid-1863 as unsuitable for his religious readership after a rival paper attacked the magazine's Evangelical credentials; it was never serialized in any periodical. The Chapman and Hall two-volume edition of October 1863 is therefore the first appearance of the text in any form, not a book edition trailing a magazine version.