Date
	September or October 1826 through January 1827.
	MS I, which is nearly entirely taken up by <nolink>“Harry and Lucy . . . vol. 1”</nolink> was dated by Margaret Ruskin as having been “begun about Sept or Oct 1826” and “finished about Jany 1827.” Since she inserted her notation within the MS I poetry anthology at the end, it is probable that Ruskin had devoted the latter part of that time to copying the poems at the end of MS I, while spending the fall/winter of 1826 on “Harry and Lucy” per se (see <link>“The Needless Alarm,” date</link>; and <link>MS I, date</link>).
	If Margaret’s dating of MS I is correct, Ruskin probably began writing or fair-copying this narrative during the family’s journey to the Lake District and Scotland, which had been delayed until the summer and fall (see “Glen of Glenfarg” and “On Scotland”). Perhaps composition and bookmaking first emerged as a project to occupy Ruskin’s dull moments during travel. He probably occupied himself in the same way during the following year’s journey to Scotland, by writing or fair-copying “Harry and Lucy . . . vol. 2” in MS III.
	Although begun late in 1826, the narrative incorporates events that may have actually occurred earlier in the year, such as a seaside visit to Hastings (<link>chap. ?</link>; and see <link>discussion, travel</link>). Harry identifies the fourth day of this visit as “the longest day” of the year, which Viljoen interprets as the summer solstice, June 18–25, and proposes that the composition date of <nolink>“Harry and Lucy . . . no. 1”</nolink> must be extended past Margaret’s terminus for MS I, January 1827, to some time after June 1827, in order to account for Ruskin’s mention of the holiday (Viljoen Papers, “Dating MSS. of Boyhood,” boxes D.V, E.IX). Viljoen discounts the possibility that the holiday had already occurred, in June 1826, before Ruskin started work on MS I, apparently reasoning that the family could not have holidayed at the seaside in summer 1826, if, as Collingwood said, they had departed for Perth in May. It is now known, however, that the family departed for Scotland in the fall, not the spring (see “Glen of Glenfarg”), and his recounting the previous summer’s events at Hastings as part of the tale is entirely plausible, without contradicting Margaret’s date.
	This interpretation is not affected by Ruskin’s placing the Hastings scenes in the second half of the narrative, and even carrying the setting into the start of “Harry and Lucy . . . vol. 2.” As early as <link>chap 1</link>, in which Harry and Lucy are still at home, Lucy mentions an event “when we were at the seaside”—Ruskin evidently forgetting, or not having decided, that his characters (unlike himself) had yet to be carried there. Rearranging events and seamlessly joining of the two narratives is as likely to have arisen from poetic license as from chronicling reality.