At the end of 1849 he began to develop a new weekly periodical that came to be known as Household Words, “conducted by Charles Dickens.” The first issue appeared on March 30, 1850. From this time forward, for some twenty years, he edited, wrote for, and profited from either this weekly magazine or his next one, All the Year Round. His editorship was active and informed, as well as lucrative, since he owned half of the magazine (which had a circulation of about thirty-five thousand), was paid £500 a year for editing it, and was also paid for contributions. He estimated that in 1850 alone he read nine hundred manuscripts, of which he accepted only a handful. His target audience with the magazine was the reading middle class that formed his earliest core audience, not intellectuals or artists or reformers, but a general readership that liked to be entertained and informed. He gathered around him a group of writers, who contributed anonymously. The only ones we know today were Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and Elizabeth Gaskell, author of North and South and Mary Barton.
