Household Words
Dickens the Journalist
Although novelist Charles
Dickens regularly contributed to such periodicals as The Examiner and The
Daily News, much of his journalistic writing first appeared in the organs
he himself established, Household Words (1850-59) and All the Year Round (1859-70). For two years
early in his career as a professional writer, Dickens had served as the editor
of publisher Richard Bentley's weekly magazine Bentley's Miscellany, in
which Dickens published stories, poems, sketches, and a complete novel, Oliver
Twist (24 instalments, February 1837 through
April 1839). However, he enjoyed the greatest freedom as editor and writer with
the two later magazines.
He didn't have to report the
day's news, or discuss the week's unless something happened on which he wanted
to comment. But he enjoyed the outlet for his overflowing
feelings, and he wrote such bright journalistic prose that his readers enjoyed
them too.
The Diverse Nature of the
Contents: Information, Entertainment, and Instruction — All with a Social Edge
Household Words betrays itself as a Shakespearean allusion in its full title:
"Familiar in their mouths as Household Words" (Henry V, Act
IV, Scene iii, line, 52 — in the young monarch's famous "Saint Crispin's
day" speech). Charles Dickens and his London publishers, Bradbury and
Evans, founded Household Words as a weekly magazine with the purpose
"to show to all, that in all familiar things, even those which are
repellant on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out"
("Preliminary Word" 1). It provided each week three distinctly
different kinds of articles: "Material of social import, informational
articles, and material for entertainment" (Lohrli
4). although Household Words pilloried the goverment
for its corrupt and incompetent handling of the Crimean War; championed the cause of health, sanitation, and clean water; and agitated for a national and truly accessible system of public education,
None of the abuses decried in Household
Words, none of the reforms advocated, none of the conditions criticized, were
first brought to public attention by Household Words; but the
popular — "readable" — discussion of these matters in Dickens's
widely read periodical brought them attention that their sober presentation in
specialized journals and in upper- class journals did not give them. [Lohrli 5]
Despite the
fact that it was always dated on Saturday, it was actually published every
Wednesday from 27 March 1850 to 28 May 1859 at the offices at No. 16 Wellington
Street North, Strand (Covent Garden), each number costing a mere tuppence, thereby ensuring a wide readership.
Theoretically, it championed the cause of the poor and working classes, but in
fact addressed itself almost exclusively to the burgeoning middle class. Only
the name of Charles 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," unillustrated.
During its first years the
magazine did valuable work in the cause of sanitary reform (especially London's
water supply and sewerage system), than a topical issue and provided
information about emigration to Australia. [Bentley et al, 124]
Typically,
each issue or number offered readers six to ten items, was printed in double
columns, and was twenty-four pages or 22,000 words in length. When the second instalment of his article on the lost Franklin expedition
appeared on 9 December 1854, for example, Household Words for that week
also contained "Madame Busque's" by George
A. Sala, "The Saucy Arethusa" by Grenville
Murray, Chapters 29 and 30 of Gaskell's North and South, and "The Great Red Book," also by Sala.
"Poems, for edification and for pleasure, appeared more frequently in
earlier volumes than in later ones" (Lohrli 18).
The style of the articles, whether verse, non-fiction, or fiction, was decidely rhetorical and fanciful. Inspired by (or perhaps consciously emulating) Dickens, contributors used
figure rather than journalistic language, employing frequently such devices as
personification, contrived conversation, exaggeration, and distortion. Even
reportage and social commentary utilized "fantasy, vision, fable,
imaginary travels, . . . and the use of fictitious
characters to serve as mouthpieces of information and opinion" (Lohrli 9).
Although the
lead item might be an article dealing with an issue of social import, the instalments of both Hard Times and The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices always led off the issues
in which they appeared. although serialising his own
novels had not originally figured in Dickens's plans for Household Words,
which he primarily intended to be a vehicle for topical journalism, essays,
short fiction, and occasional poetry, in 1853 he determined to run Hard
Times for These Times (1 April through 12 August 1854) in order to bolster
the sagging circulation and ensure his income as writer, editor, and publisher
should not be jeopardized, for as the founder and conductor he received both a
salary and a share of the profits. He found the experience of writing for weekly
serialisation, however, quite wearing, and determined
not to engage in the practice again — and, in fact, he did not until the
launching of his new weekly, All the Year Round in 1859.
The Contributors: "Some
Three Hundred Ninety Writers" (Lohrli 24)
Thanks to the painstaking
sleuthing of Anne Lohrli through the record of
payments to contributors in the office book kept by subeditor William Henry
Wills, we know precisely who wrote what over the journal's nine-year existence
— and how much or little each was paid:
Taken as a whole, the Household
Words were a diverse group. They included an occasional poet and novelist whose
works are still acclaimed — and persons so obscure that their names appear in
no biographical compilation. They included writers old and young — from veteran
survivors of the Romantic Age to writers who lived well into the twentieth
century. They included people of all social classes — from the factory worker
to the gentleman, from the self-taught to the master of arts
and the honorary doctor of laws. They included men of various professions —
barristers and divines, medical men and naturalists, soldiers and sailors. They
included people from most parts of the British Isles and from various parts of
the Empire — India, Ceylon, Australasia, as well as an
pccassional foreigner — American, German, Belgian,
Italian, Polish, Hungarian. They included, incidentally some ninety women
contributors" [Lohrli 24]
— although, unfortunately, the leading female writer of the
age, George Eliot, declined Dickens's invitations to contribute because she was daunted by
the prospect of weekly serialisation. Noted
contributors included Dickens's deputy-editor, W. H. Wills, and members of the
"stable" of writers Dickens patronized, encouraged, exhorted and
criticized: Dickens's close friends Sir Edward G. D. Bulwer-Lytton, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Chancy Hare Townshend,
John Forster, and Wilkie Collins; two colonial journalists, John Capper and John Lang; occasional
contributors of fiction, including Charles Whitehead, Henry Spicer, and Thomas
Wilkinson Speight; then-popular poets Edwin Arnold, Coventry Patmore, Mary Howitt, Dora Greenell,
William Cox Bennett, John Critchley Prince, Thomas
Miller, Mary Jane Tomkins, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, and Adelaide Anne Procter (whose pseudonym for
submissions to the magazine, "Mary Berwick," Dickens failed to
penetrate); four journalists who had been associates of Dickens at the Daily
News: Dudley Costello, Frederick Knight Hunt, Sidney Laman
Blanchard, and William Blanchard Jerrold; Grenville Murray, Harriet Martineau, the Rev. James White, John Forster, George Meredith, Percy Fitzgerald, Leigh Hunt, Caroline Chisholm, Sheridan Le Fanu, R. H. Horne, Charles Reade, T. A. Trollope, Henry Morley, H. A. Sala, James
Payn, Edmund Yates, Walter Thornbury,
John Hollingshead, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Gaskell, Charles Lever, Eliza Lynn Linton; and
letter-writers who did not contribute directly, but whose correspondence to
friends and relatives back in Britain arrived at 16 Wellington Street North
"through one means or another" (Lohrli 33).
Of the established group of
writers who contributed mainly non-fiction prose, some wrote on subjects on which they were well informed by reason of their background,
as Capper on Ceylon and India, Lang on India, Wreford
on Italy. Some wrote on subjects related to their experience and professional
training: Costello had been in the army, Hannay in
the navy; Hunt and Morley were both licensed medical men; Morley, in addition,
had been a schoolmaster, and became, in 1857, a King's College lecturer in
English language and literature. On subjects of their special knowledge, these
writers, and others of comparable background or experience, wrote with some
authority. [Lohrli 30]
The regulars
who contributed the preponderance of articles numbered thirty-five. Paul Schlicke gives the number of regular contributors as
exceeding 380, and estimates the weekly magazine's normal weekly circulation as
38,500, although its initial numbers sold over 100,000
copies and the Extra Christmas Numbers over 80,000. With a fifty-per cent share
to protect (his publishers had only a twenty-five per cent interest) Dickens
insisted that all contributions conform to his strict standards for
"family reading," since the journal would publish only wholesome
fiction and journalism.Ê He received payment as a
contributor, plus a £500 annual salary for his work as editor-in-chief. Dickens
took his role as conductor seriously, carefully vetting every contribution for
accuracy, style, readability, and consistency. "Editorial revision was
extensive — and drastic. Dickens sometimes rewrote articles and stories almost
entirely" (Lohrli 15).
Dickens's
own contributions to Household Words were both plentiful and
significant: in addition to providing the magazine with weekly instalments of Hard Times, in its pages he published
both A Child's History of England (1851) and The Lazy Tour of Two
Idle Apprentices (1857) serially, and contributed in his own right 108
essays and articles (as well as collaborating on a further 45). Over a quarter
of the pieces in Household Words were written by Dickens's regular
editorial staff of five (Dickens, Collins, Wills, Horne, and Morley), who
thought themselves well remunerated at £5 per week. Another thirty writers over
the decade of its existence provided the magazine with between twenty and 140
pieces each; some 200 writers each contributed just a single piece. "The
stated rate of payment for prose contributions was a guinea for a two-column
page" (Lohrli 21), verse being remunerated at
about twice that rate. As self-appointed guardian of the Household Words
purse, however, Wills paid somewhat less than the going rate for at least
eighty prose contributions.
Advertisements and
announcements published in Household Words followed the last item in a
number. They concerned the two supplementary publications (the Household
Narrative of Current Events and the Household Words Almanac), the availability of Household
Words in monthly parts and in bound volumes, the extra Christmas numbers,
forthcoming serials, the publication in book form of three Household
Words serials (A Child's History of England, Hard Times, and The
Dead Secret, and Dickens's public readings. [Lohrli
19]
Among the
decade's major novelists, aside from Dickens himself and Wilkie
Collins (whose A Rogue's Life and The Dead Secret ran in 1856 and
1857 respectively in the magazine), only Elizabeth Gaskell published novels in
serial instalments in Household Words: Lizzie
Leigh (three parts, March 30, 8 and 15 April 1850), Cranford (13
December 1851 through 21 May 1853), North and South (2 September 1854
through 27 January 1855), and My Lady Ludlow (19 June through 25
September 1858). The Christmas Stories, in fact "framed-tale"
novellas (to three of which Gaskell contributed), became a regular feature in
the "extra-double" numbers that Dickens produced in conjunction with
other staff writers for the holiday season: The Seven Poor Travellers (1854), The Holly-Tree (1855), The
Wreck of the Golden Mary (1856), The Perils of Certain English Prisoners
(1857), and A House To Let (1858).
Wrapping Up
Household Words
The end of Household Words
reveals several interesting facets of Dickens's personality. After he separated
from his wife of three decades, Catherine, in May 1858, there began to
circulate rumour of adultery, which Dickens attempted
to quash by offering a full-page defence in the 12
June 1858 issue. However, when his publishers, Bradbury and Evans, refused to
republish the same notice in their other highly successful journal, Punch, Dickens offered to buy out (or to find a buyer for) their one-quarter
share. They countered that they and not Dickens controlled the trade name of Household
Words, but in a suit in the Court of Chancery Dickens won the day; he
swiftly wound up the magazine's affairs, incorporating it into his new weekly, All
the Year Round. When his eldest son married Evans's daughter, Dickens,
doubtless still smarting from his supposed ill-treatment, refused to attend the
wedding!
References
Bentley, Nicholas; Michael Slater, and Nina Burgis. The Dickens Index. Oxford and New York:
Oxford U. P., 1990.
Davis, Paul.
Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work.
New York: Checkmark and Facts On File, 1999.
Fido,
Martin. The World of Charles Dickens.
Vancouver: Raincoast, 1997.
Lohrli, Anne. Household Words: A Weekly Journal
1850-1859 Conducted by Charles Dickens — Table of Contents, List of
Contributors and Their Contributions Based on The Household Words Office Book
in the Morris L. Parrish Collection of Victorian Novelists, Princeton
University Library. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973.
Schlicke, Paul. Oxford Reader's
Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999.
http://www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/hw.html