household word

Household Words
Front cover of Vol. II, September 28, 1850- March 22, 1851
Author	Editor: Charles Dickens
Original title	Household Words, A Weekly Journal conducted by Charles Dickens
Country	England
Language	English
Series	Monthly: 27 March 1850 - 28 May 1859
Genre(s)	Magazine
Publisher	Bradbury & Evans
Media type	Print
Followed by	All the Year Round

Household Words was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens which took its name from the line from Shakespeare "Familiar in his mouth as household words" — Henry V.

History

Household Words was published every Wednesday 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":

Theoretically, the paper championed the cause of the poor and working classes, but in fact addressed itself almost exclusively to the middle class. Only the name of Dickens, the journal's "conductor," appeared;. Articles were unsigned (although authors of serialized novels were identified) and, in spite of its regularly featuring an "advertiser," unillustrated.

In order to boost slumping sales Dickens' serialized his own novel, Hard Times, every week between April 1 and August 12, 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".

That Dickens owned half of the company and his agents, Forster and Wills, owned a further quarter of it was insurance that the author would have a free hand in the paper. In 1859, however, owing to a dispute between Dickens and the publishers, Bradbury and Evans, it was replaced by All the Year Round in which he 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.

Serialized Novels

Prominent novels that were serialized in Household Words included:

• A Child's History of England by Charles Dickens published from January 25, 1851 - December 10, 1853
• Cranford, North and South and My Lady Ludlow by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Song of the Western Men by Robert Stephen Hawker
• The Dead Secret and A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins

Collaborative Works

Dickens would also collaborate with other staff writers on a number of Christmas stories and plays for seasonal issues of the magazine. These included:

• The Seven Poor Travellers in the Extra Christmas Number (14 December, 1854) with Wilkie Collins, Eliza Lynn Linton, Adelaide Anne Procter (under the name "Mary Berwick"), and George Augustus Henry Sala.
• The Holly Tree Inn in the Extra Christmas Number (15 December, 1855) with Wilkie Collins, William Howitt, Harriet Parr, and Adelaide Anne Procter.
• The Wreck of the Golden Mary in the Extra Christmas Number (6 December, 1856) with Wilkie Collins, Percy Hetherington Fitzgerald, Adelaide Anne Procter, Harriet Parr, and Rev. James White.
• The Frozen Deep A play written with Wilkie Collins and initially performed in the converted schoolroom of Dickens's London residence, Tavistock House (6 January, 1857)
• The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices an non-seasonal collaboration (3-31 October, 1857) with Wilkie Collins
• The Perils of Certain English Prisoners in the Extra Christmas Number (7 December, 1857) with Wilkie Collins
• A House to Let in the Extra Christmas Number (7 December, 1858) with Elizabeth Gaskell and Adelaide Anne Procter.

Other contributors to Household Words included author James Payn.

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' subeditor, W. H. Wills.

References

• Lohrli, Anne. Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-1859. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973.