Inventor of a system of musical notation, misc. writer, under pseudonyms "Arthur Wallbridge" and "Wallbridge Lunn". Contributed to People's Journal. Published The Sequential System of Musical Notation, 1843. Author of the booklets Jest and Earnest, 1840; Bizarre Fables, 1842; Torrington Hall (account of visit to lunatic asylum), 1845; The Council of Four: A Game at "Definitions" (calls himself editor), 1847. Reprinted the four last-mentioned items in Miscellanies "By Wallbridge Lunn; ('Arthur Wallbridge')", 1851; and, in whole or part and with some additions, in The Wallbridge Miscellanies, 1874, and later dates.

On Nov. 15, 1841, Dickens wrote a letter to J. Lunn, Esquire, identified in Pilgrim Letters as the playwright Joseph Lunn (l784-1863, D.N.B.). Dickens's letter was in reply to the request made by Lunn that Dickens introduce Lunn's son to Chapman & Hall as possible publishers of a book that the son had written. In the letter Dickens explained his understanding with the publishers that his introduction of a writer was in no way to influence their decision concerning "the acceptance or rejection" of a work. "I cannot therefore," he wrote, "introduce the author of Jest and Earnest to them 'in a manner which will induce them to purchase and publish his second work'. But I will introduce him and his desire, gladly. And I will add (which is perfectly true) that I think very highly of his little book. Beyond this, I cannot go. ... If you will let me know... that your son has no objection to this mode of introduction, I will say all I can to them, which is better than writing it.

"Let me assure you, and your son, most unfeignedly that I write this with a real interest in the author of Jest and Earnest, and a real desire for his success".

On Nov. 22, Dickens wrote again to Lunn, stating that he would see Chapman & Hall the following day; on Nov. 24, he informed Lunn that he had spoken with the publishers and left them Jest and Earnest to look at. "All I can do," he wrote, "I have done." (Bizarre Fables, the "second work" of "the author of Jest and Earnest" was published not by Chapman & Hall, but by W. S. Orr & Co).

Dickens's interest in young Lunn makes it probable that whatever Lunn might have submitted to H.W. would have been favourably considered. The obviousness of "Two Nephews" suggests that it is the writing of an amateur: some of the stories and sketches published by Lunn as his writing give the same impression.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.