Edited by Charles Dickens and followed by All the Year Round, the popular six-penny Household Words assessed the French press and petitioned for inexpensive reading rooms for the British “unknown public” described in its pages by Wilkie Collins.

1. [Dickens, Charles and W. H. Wills]. “Valentine's Day at the Post Office.” 1 (1850): 6–12.

Announced that 70 million newspapers passed annually through the post office because some were sent more than once. Demand came from press coverage of births and deaths, crimes and accidents, current vanities and social changes.

2. [Forster, John]. “Francis Jeffrey.” 1 (1850): 113–18.

Reminisced about the start of the Edinburgh Review, intended by founders Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Sydney Smith, and Henry Brougham to stimulate serious thinking on serious subjects. Editor Jeffrey inaugurated the “forcible style of criticism” by paid contributors (10 guineas a sheet, later 20), setting “the all-important principle of a perfect independence of his publisher'scontrol.”

3. [Crowe, Joseph Archer]. “A Paris Newspaper.” 1 (1850): 164–67.

Chose the Constitutionnel (40,000 copies daily) as the prototype of Paris newspapers. Their offices were neater than London ones cluttered with foreign gazettes, parliamentary reports, and reference books. The French preferred to sell their tribunes by subscription, so forms were available in the post office. The Advertising Company of Paris bought the last page of every paper of any consequence.