The
Dickens
Fellowship

 

 

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Dickens as a Journalist 		   

Dickens
Fellowship
     
 

Dickens was an accomplished reporter before he achieved success as a writer of fiction. Following his rise to fame, he took on a number of editing roles that proved less than satisfying before becoming in 1850 the editor of a weekly publication, Household Words. He edited this and its successor, All the Year Round, through to his death in 1870.

Some details are given below, in chronological order, of his journalistic roles.

   
1829 - 31 Freelance law reporter
1831 - 32 Parliamentary reporter, The Mirror of Parliament
1832 - 34 Reporter, True Sun
1834 - 36 Reporter, The Morning Chronicle
1837 - 39 Editor, Bentley's Miscellany
 

First editor of the monthly magazine, Dickens found it
difficult to work with the publisher, Richard Bentley. Replaced by William Harrison Ainsworth.

 
1840 - 41 Founder and Editor, Master Humphrey's Clock
 

A weekly magazine, conceived and written entirely
by Dickens, Master Humphrey's Clock failed in its purpose to be a popular miscellany. However, it survived as solely a vehicle for the serial publication of The Old Curiosity Shop, which had been launched in the fourth issue as a less ambitious work, and Barnaby Rudge.

 
1846 Editor, The Daily News
 

Dickens soon discovered that he was not well suited to the
editorial routines of a daily.

 
1850 - 59 Co-founder and Editor, Household Words
 

For the last 20 years of his life, Dickens was to
edit his own weekly magazine. Household Words published topical features, essays, short fiction and poetry by a variety of writers, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wilkie Collins and Mrs Gaskell. Following a dispute between the publishers and Dickens, related to the separation from his wife in
1859, publication ceased.

 
1859 - 70 Founder and Editor, All the Year Round
  Dickens's new weekly magazine was similar to Household
Words, but serial fiction was introduced as a major element. Among the novels published in All the Year Round were Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and Bleak House. Another major feature from 1860 was a series of stories written by Dickens, blending fact with fiction, recounting the experiences of an 'uncommercial traveller'. These stories were later published separately as a book. The magazine continued to be published after Dickens's death, for 18 years under the editorship of his
son, Charley. It finally ceased publication in 1893.
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