All the Year Round was in many ways identical to its predecessor Household Words (1850-1859), not least because it remained a 2d. weekly (9d. monthly) conspicuously ‘Conducted by Charles Dickens.’ In two respects, however, its constitution differed. Its leading article now comprised an instalment of serial fiction, whose authorship was identified; gone were the investigative reports and satirical broadsides that had characterised leaders in the earlier incarnation.  Dickens and sub-editor W. H. Wills were now the sole partners in and proprietors of their publication. When Dickens serialised A Tale of Two Cities (1859) and Great Expectations (1860-61) in its pages, he was his own publisher; when he contracted authors such as Wilkie Collins, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Charles Reade, Frances Trollope, and Edmund Yates to contribute novels, he became their publisher as well as editor.

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