DICKENS | All the Year Round, a Weekly Journal, 1859-1871

DICKENS, CHARLES, EDITOR

All the Year Round, a Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens. With Which is incorporated Household Words. London: [At the Office of All the Year Round] for No. 11 Wellington Street North, and Published at 26 Wellington Street and Messrs Chapman and Hall, Volume I April 30 to October 22 1959 - Volume XX June 13 to November 28 1868; All the Year Round, a Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens. With Which is incorporated Household Words. New Series. London: Published at 26 Wellington Street and Messrs Chapman and Hall, Volume I December 5 to May 29 1868 - Volume VI June 3 to November 5 1871

8vo, (235 x 147mm.), 26 volumes, including the special Christmas number, contemporary half maroon calf gilt, spines lettered in gilt, marbled boards, marbled endpapers, marbled edges, extremities lightly rubbed, otherwise A VERY NICE SET

Household Words had ceased publication in 1857 in the wake of scandal surrounding Dickens' separation from his wife Catherine and a dispute he had with publishers Bradbury and Evans. This dispute was resolved witin a few months of publication of All the Year Round and Dickens was able to incorporate reference to that publication in his new periodical, issued in collaboration with William Wills.  

A number of prominent authors and novels were first serialised in All the Year Round, including Dickens‘ A Tale of Two Cities (June 1859 to December 1859), Great Expectations (1 December 1860 to August 1861), Wilkie Collins‘s The Woman in White (29 November 1859 to 1860), No Name (15 March 1862 to 17 January 1863) and The Moonstone (1868), Anthony Trollope’s The Duke’s Children and Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s A Strange Story. These and the special Christmas numbers boosted circulation and ensured the periodical was a success.

Charles Dickens collaborated with other staff writers on a number of Christmas stories and plays for seasonal issues of the magazine. These included The Haunted House in the 1859 extra Christmas number (13 December) with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Procter, George Augustus Henry Sala, and Hesba Stretton; Mugby Junction in the 1866 extra Christmas number (12 December) which includes The Signal-Man (aka No. 1 Branch Line: The Signalman) and No Thoroughfare in the 1867 extra Christmas number (12 December) with Wilkie Collins.

In 1868 Dickens took his son Charley into the business who continued publication after his father's death, buyng out William Wills in 1871, until 1895.