Author | Editor: Charles Dickens |
---|---|
Original title | Household Words, A Weekly Journal conducted by Charles Dickens |
Country | England |
Language | English |
Series | Weekly: 30 March 1850 – 28 May 1859 |
Genre | Magazine |
Publisher | Bradbury & Evans |
Media type | |
Followed by | All the Year Round |
Household Words was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s. It took its name from the line in Shakespeare's Henry V : "Familiar in his mouth as household words."
During the planning stages, titles originally considered by Dickens included The Robin, The Household Voice, The Comrade, The Lever, and The Highway of Life. [1]
Household Words was published every Saturday from March 1850 to May 1859. Each number cost a mere tuppence, thereby ensuring a wide readership. The publication's first edition carried a section covering the paper's principles, entitled "A Preliminary Word":
We aspire to live in the Household affections, and to be numbered among the Household thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring to innumerable homes, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time.
— Charles Dickens
A longer version of the publication's principles appeared in newspapers such as The Argus in September 1850. [2]
Theoretically, the paper championed the cause of the poor and working classes, but in fact it addressed itself almost exclusively to the middle class. Only the name of Dickens, the journal's "conductor", appeared; articles were unsigned (although authors of serialised novels were identified) and, in spite of its regularly featuring an "advertiser", the paper was unillustrated.
To boost slumping sales Dickens serialised his own novel, Hard Times , in weekly parts between 1 April and 12 August 1854. It had the desired effect, more than doubling the journal's circulation and encouraging the author, who remarked that he was, "three–parts mad, and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at Hard Times". [3]
That Dickens owned half of the company and his agents, John Forster and William Henry Wills, owned a further quarter of it was insurance that the author would have a free hand in the paper. Wills was also appointed associate editor and, in December 1849, Dickens's acquaintance, writer and poet Richard Henry Horne was appointed sub-editor at a salary of "five guineas a week". [4] In 1859, however, owing to a dispute between Dickens and the publishers Bradbury and Evans over their refusal to print his "personal statement" regarding his divorce in their other magazine, Punch, [5] publication ceased and Household Words was replaced by All the Year Round , over which Dickens had greater control.
The journal contained a mixture of fiction and nonfiction. A large amount of the non-fiction dealt with the social issues of the time.
Prominent works that were serialised in Household Words include:
Dickens also collaborated with other staff writers on a number of Christmas stories and plays for seasonal issues of the magazine. These included:
Other contributors to Household Words included James Payn, John Hollingshead, Harriet Martineau, Frances Shayle George, William Duthie and Henry Morley.
A complete key to who wrote what and for how much in Household Words was compiled in 1973 by Anne Lohrli, using an analysis of the office account book maintained by Dickens's subeditor, W. H. Wills.
William Makepeace Thackeray was a British novelist, author and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her work is of interest to social historians as well as readers of literature. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë. In this biography, she wrote only of the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life; the rest she omitted, deciding certain, more salacious aspects were better kept hidden. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–1853), North and South (1854–55), and Wives and Daughters (1865), all having been adapted for television by the BBC.
William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early "sensation novel", and for The Moonstone (1868), which, after Poe's story, Murders in the Rue Morgue, has been proposed as the first modern English detective novel.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1857.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1854.
All the Year Round was a Victorian periodical, being a British weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom. Edited by Dickens, it was the direct successor to his previous publication Household Words, abandoned due to differences with his former publisher.
The Cornhill Magazine (1860–1975) was a monthly Victorian magazine and literary journal named after the street address of the founding publisher Smith, Elder & Co. at 65 Cornhill in London. In the 1860s, under the editorship of William Makepeace Thackeray, the paper's large circulation peaked around 110,000. Due to emerging competitors, circulation fell to 20,000 by 1870. The following year, Leslie Stephen took over as editor. When Stephen left in 1882, circulation had further fallen to 12,000. The Cornhill was purchased by John Murray in 1912, and continued to publish issues until 1975.
"A House to Let" is a short story by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter. It was originally published in 1858 in the Christmas edition of Dickens's Household Words magazine. Collins wrote the introduction and collaborated with Dickens on the second story and ending, while Gaskell and Proctor wrote the remainder.
No Thoroughfare is a stage play and novel by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, both released in December 1867.
The bibliography of Charles Dickens (1812–1870) includes more than a dozen major novels, many short stories, several plays, several non-fiction books, and individual essays and articles. Dickens's novels were serialized initially in weekly or monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.
The Dickens family are the descendants of John Dickens, the father of the English novelist Charles Dickens. John Dickens was a clerk in the Royal Navy Pay Office and had eight children from his marriage to Elizabeth Barrow. Their second child and eldest son was Charles Dickens, whose descendants include the novelist Monica Dickens, the writer Lucinda Dickens Hawksley and the actors Harry Lloyd and Brian Forster.
"The Haunted House" is a story series published in 1859 for the weekly periodical All the Year Round. It was "Conducted by Charles Dickens", with Charles Dickens writing the opening and closing stories, framing stories by Dickens himself and five other authors.
Harriet Parr (1828–1900) was an English author of the Victorian era, who wrote under the pseudonym Holme Lee. She also wrote stories for children.
Louisa Nottidge (1802-1858) was a British woman whose unjust detention in a lunatic asylum attracted widespread public attention in mid-19th century England. In that period several similar cases emerged in the newspapers of sane persons being incarcerated in lunatic asylums for the convenience or financial gain of their immediate families. The most prominent, other than Louisa Nottidge, was the case of Rosina Bulwer Lytton. This public fascination and anger was exploited by the writer Wilkie Collins, who published the best-selling novel The Woman in White in 1860. The case of Louisa Nottidge has remained of interest with respect to the rights of psychiatric patients, women's rights, and the conflict between freedom of religion and the legal process.
This is a bibliography of the works of Wilkie Collins.
William Henry Wills JP was a British journalist, playwright, a newspaper editor and a close friend and confidant of the author Charles Dickens, who entrusted Wills with the task of forwarding his letters to his mistress Ellen Ternan.
Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist.
Hon. Edmund Phipps was a lawyer and author.
"The Trial for Murder" is a short story written by Charles Dickens in 1865. It was originally published under the title "To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt" as a chapter in Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions in an extra Christmas volume of the weekly literary magazine, All the Year Round. It was later published in 1866 in a collection of ghost stories known as "Three Ghost Stories", along with "The Haunted House" and "The Signal-Man".
William Duthie was a mid-19th century English goldsmith and author of prose and poetry.