The fact that most of the contributors to Charles Dickens's first periodical, Household Words (published from 1850 to 1859), were anonymous has meant that in some highly important respects the character of the publication has been hidden. Using as a basis the Household Words Office Book (in the Morris L. Parrish collection of Victorian Novelists in the Princeton University Library), Miss Lohrli has provided a table of contents to the nineteen volumes of Household Words, a list of the contributors with their contributions, and a title index to the more than 3,000 items, prose and verse, published during the nine years of the periodical's existence. She has also identified a large number of the contributors and unearthed biographical information about them from a variety of sources.
Among the 390 men and women included in the list of contributors, such writers as Wilkie Collins, George Augustus Sala, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Adelaide Procter occupy a prominent place. THere also appear names of persons rarely -- or never -- mention in connection with Dickens's periodical: the colonial journalist John Cappter, the miscellaneous writer (and divine) Edmund Saul Dixon, the pioneer settler in Australia John Pascoe Fawkner, the forgotten poetess Mary Jane Tomkins, the son and daughter of Thomas Hood, the sister of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the widow of Sydney Smith, and foreign contributors -- American, German, Belgian, Italian, Polish, and Hungarian. The contributors are described with respect to educational background, professional training, work published, and their relations with Dickens. Data are also given on the feeds paid for the contributions. The result is a fascinating depiction of some of the popular writers of that day as chosen by the decidedly catholic taste of Dickens.
The four-part introduction discusses the periodical in general: its contents, style, and readership; next the contributors to the periodical -- the 'regulars' and the occasional writers; then, the Household Words Office Book; and, finally, pertinent bibliographical matters concerning Household Words.
This book will be of absorbing interest to all Dickensians and to specialists in the literature and social history of the period.

Anne Lohrli is emeritus professor of English, New Mexico Highlands University.

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