Household words
Publisher: G.P. Putnam
Published: 1850
Place of publication: [New-York
Language: eng
Work titles: Household words (New York, N.Y.)
Description: Household Words was an English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens in the 1850s which took its name from the line from Shakespeare "Familiar in his mouth as household words"   Henry V.  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":    We aspire to live in the Household affections, and to be numbered among the Household thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring to innumerable homes, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time.
Notes: Title from caption; imprint from v. 1 t.p.

Publisher varies.

Editor: Charles Dickens.

Latest issue consulted: Vol. 14, no. 353 (Dec. 27, 1856).

Between <v. 4, no. 80> and v. 14, no. 336 individual reprinted issues are undated; from v. 14, no. 337 (Sept. 6, 1856) individual reprinted issues bear the same date as the London originals.

Vol. 6, no. 141-v. 7, no. 168 also called: New ser., v. 1, no. 12- new ser., v. 1, no. 40; individual issues of vols. 9-12 also called no. 1-26; v. 13, no. 304-312 also called no. 1-9.

[Extra Christmas no.] for 1852 called v. 6, no. 153* = new ser., v. 1, no. 25; [extra Christmas no.] for 1853 called v. 8, no. 196*.

Also issued in separately numbered monthly parts.

Extra Christmas no. issued 1851, 1854-<1856>.

Initially consisted of copies of the London edition distributed by a New York publisher; later reprints published with New York imprints. Cf. W.E. Buckler, "Household words" in America, in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, v. 45 (1951), p. 160-166.