The first number of Dickens’s periodical Household Words appeared on Saturday, 30 March 1850. This much-vaunted ‘comrade and friend of many thousands of people’ was the joint property of Dickens (one-half), publishers Bradbury and Evans (one-fourth), W. H. Hills, and John Forster (one-eighth each), and cost two pence per issue. Many of the 3000 articles were unsigned, and designed, as stated in ‘A Preliminary Word’, ‘to show to all, that in all familiar things, even in those which are repellent on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out.’ Flagging sales saw Dickens serialize Hard Times within its pages. He discontinued his ‘conducting’ of this weekly on 28 May 1859, incorporating it into All The Year Round.
[Heading of Charles Dickens's Household Words, Volume 1, page 1 dated Saturday March 30, 1850.]
In 1858, Catherine and Charles Dickens legally separated. The scandal surrounding the event affected his relationship with Bradbury and Evans, who refused to publish his explanation of his separation in Punch. Annoyed, Dickens turned back to Chapman and Hall and began All The Year Round, a new weekly again priced at twopence. The first issue of 30 April 1859 carried his serialized novels A Tale of Two Cities (seen here) and Great Expectations. In later issues, works by Wilkie Collins, Bulwer Lytton, and Elizabeth Gaskell featured.
[Title page from Charles Dickens's All the Year Round, Volume 1, from April 30 to October 22 1859. Numbers 1 to 26.]
In 1858, Catherine and Charles Dickens legally separated. The scandal surrounding the event affected his relationship with Bradbury and Evans, who refused to publish his explanation of his separation in Punch. Annoyed, Dickens turned back to Chapman and Hall and began All The Year Round, a new weekly again priced at twopence. The first issue of 30 April 1859 carried his serialized novels A Tale of Two Cities (seen here) and Great Expectations. In later issues, works by Wilkie Collins, Bulwer Lytton, and Elizabeth Gaskell featured.
[Page 1 of Charles Dickens's All the Year Round, Number 1, Saturday April 30, 1859. ]