that on more than one occasion
Dickens cited the eighteenth-century
Spectator as a model: like the
eighteenth-century journal, he insisted
that all contributions to his periodicals
be anonymous. Of course, the vast
majority of nineteenth-century
persiodical publication espoused the
principle of anonymous publication: by
1870 very few journals identified
authors of reviews or articles28. Cardinal
Wiseman defended the journalistic
anonymous 'we', on the grounds that it
depersonalized the writer into "the
representative of certain priciples
embodied in a collective
responsibility"29. But with the
anonymity in Household Words, we are
faced with a different kind of deper-
sonalisation - not into a collective
responsibility, but into the figure of
Dickens. Dickens' name was displayed
so prominently that some readers
assumed that he was the author of the
whole journal and not merely editor.
Wilkie Collins complained that, after
Dickens had retouched one of his con
tributions, readers might mistake him
for the author of the piece. Dickens
replied that "such a confusion of
authorship ...would be a far greater
service than disservice to him"30. The
desire to stamp everything in his
journal with his personal touch
explains the near-fanatical expenditure
of time and energy Dickens put into his
journalism. Harry Stone describes
Dickens' techniques of management:
"With the inner circles [of contributors]
he rigidly controlled what was written
and how it was written; with more
independent or casual contributors, he
exercised control through rejection or
through thorough editing."
The effect of this is to make Household
Words as a remarkably homogeneous
read. The individual numbers strived,
naturally, for variety; but the variation
exists under a single head. Articles
explored all manner of aspects of
Victorian society, social issues and
concerns, art, advances in science,
studies of foreigh cultures and societies,
analyses of Victorian institutions such
as the Post Office, the Police, certain
industries and studies of characters or
character types. Each issue also
contained fiction and poetry. Household
Words did not carry book reviews, or
discussions of works as a whole; but it
did summarize and quote selectively
from books. More importantly, Dickens
strove to maintain a unified tone
throughout. At its most basic, this
meant that writers were expected to
adopt Dickensian style, which was,
needless to say, often nothing more
than an injunction to pastiche. Percy
Fitzgerald later remembered:
"the writers were compelled, owing to
the necessity of producing effect, to
adopt a tone of exaggeration.
Everything, even trivial, had to be
made more comic than it really was.
This was the law of the paper..."32
Examples are easy to come by: writers
attempting the Dickensian trick of
comedy, but betraying a heavy hand.
George A. Sala, for instance, tries to
inject humour into the subject of
'Houses to Lef (20 March 1852) by
attempting bathetic mock-seriousness:
"Houses to Let! The subject is fraught
with speculative interest for those
philosophers who are content to leave
the sun, the moon, the pre-Adamic
41
