Chambers's Journal was the direct inspiration for
Dickens's Household Words and All the Year Round"
(Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction, p.113).
“Every Saturday, when the poorest labourer in the country
draws his humble earnings, he shall have it in his power to purchase, with an
insignificant portion of even that humble sum, a meal of healthful, useful, and
agreeable mental instruction: nay, every school boy shall be able to purchase
with his pocket money, something permanently useful -- something calculated to
influence his fate through life -- instead of the trash upon which the grown
children of the present day are wont to spend it" (Herd, The March of Journalism..., p.206).
By 1833, this magazine was being published in the capitals
of Scotland, England, and Ireland, "a circumstance with no parallel in
the history of letters." Reprints of principle articles were regularly
produced in New York. “6 February 1847 issue pointed out that of its circulation of about 80 000, 50 000 were issued in monthly parts and so were presumably for the upper classes.This indicated a failure in the object of the paper, which was to the working classes” (Webb, The British Working Class Reader, p.78).
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