While shilling monthlies such as the Cornhill receive significant attention for their role in altering the shape of the mid-Victorian literary and periodical markets, the literary weeklies were some of the first publications to court and consolidate the period's middle-class readers into a distinct readership. Over time, the weeklies became a significant presence in the periodical market, eventually putting pressure on the shilling monthlies (Law 2000: 25). The more modest price of periodicals such as Household Words, All the Year Round and Once a Week attracted a broad swath of middle-class and aspiring middleclass readers from those who could afford only the most modest luxuries to those who had greater economic freedom. The way Dickens and his publishers marketed and sold Household Words and All the Year Round shows their keen awareness of the different economic and class realities of the weekly's potential readers. The weekly format of Household Words, for example, ‘required less outlay of cash and fit well with the social and economic rhythms of weekly wages and Sunday leisure’ (Brake 2016: 242). Consequently, the periodical's twopenny price allowed it to attract two different audiences: the price of the publication made it ‘accessible to the working classes’ (Phegley 2016: 291), giving them access to the literature and cultural values embedded in publications aimed at a middle-class readership, while the weekly's association with Dickens meant that the periodical remained ‘attractive to middle-class readers, who would have been particularly pleased with [this] link’ to the well-respected novelist (Phegley 2016: 291). Many weeklies, including Dickens's, ‘also issued monthly editions with specially created advertising wrappers’ (Brake 2016: 243), targeting wealthier middle-class readers by invoking the cultural capital of the monthly publication, which felt and looked more like a book. Regardless of the format purchased by readers, the content of the mid-Victorian weekly – at least, as it was reimagined by Dickens – supported the social mandate of the rising and increasingly dominant Victorian middle class.

Of all the periodicals considered in this book, Dickens's Household Words is perhaps the most obviously political. Under Dickens's editorship, Household Words published serial fiction, mostly social problem novels, and contemporary poetry alongside ‘politically orientated pieces on education and industrialism’ (Phegley 2016: 292). The periodical's focus on social issues transformed the weekly into an organ for promoting Dickens's social agenda. However, by the 1860s, there was a notable shift in Dickens's approach to periodical publication.