This blue plaque is attached to a wall over the "Charles Dickens Coffee House" close to Covent Garden. The plaque reads:
"This building / housed the offices / of / Charles Dickens' / magazine / 'All the Year Round' / and his / private apartments / 1859 - 1870"
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All the Year Round was a Victorian periodical, being a British weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom. Edited by Dickens, it was the direct successor to his previous publication Household Words, abandoned due to differences with his former publisher. It hosted the serialization of many prominent novels, including Dickens' own A Tale of Two Cities. After Dickens's death in 1870, it was owned and edited by his eldest son Charles Dickens, Jr.
1859-1870
In 1858, Charles Dickens was the editor of his then magazine Household Words, published by Bradbury and Evans; a petty dispute with them led Dickens to realize that he was at the whim of his publisher, and to decide that he would create a new weekly magazine that he would own and control entirely.
In 1859, Dickens founded All the Year Round. Similarly to his previous magazine, the author searched a title that could be derived from a Shakespeare quote. He eventually found it on 28 January 1859 (in Othello, act one, scene three, lines 128-129), to be displayed before the title:
'The story of our lives, from year to year.' — Shakespeare.
ALL THE YEAR ROUND.
A weekly journal.
Conducted by Charles Dickens.
The new weekly magazine had its debut issue on Saturday 30 April 1859, featuring the first installment of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. The launch was an immediate success.
“ So well has All the Year Round gone that it was yesterday able to repay me, with five per cent. interest, all the money I advanced for its establishment (paper, print etc. all paid, down to the last number), and yet to leave a good £500 balance at the banker's! ”
—-Charles Dickens
One month after the launch, Dickens won a lawsuit in the Court of Chancery against his former publisher Bradbury and Evans, giving him back the trade name of his previous journal. On Saturday 28 May 1859, five weeks after the launch of All the Year Round, Dickens terminated Household Words, publishing its last issue with a prospectus for his new journal and the announcement that, "After the appearance of the present concluding Number of Household Words, this publication will merge into the new weekly publication, All the Year Round, and the title, Household Words, will form a part of the title-page of All the Year Round." AYR's full title then acquired a fourth item: " All the Year Round. A Weekly Journal. Conducted by Charles Dickens. With Which Is Incorporated Household Words. "
All the Year Round contained the same mixture of fiction and non-fiction as Household Words but with a greater emphasis on literary matters and less on journalism. Nearly 11 per cent of the non-fiction articles in All the Year Round dealt with some aspect of international affairs or cultures, discounting the American Civil War, which Dickens instructed his staff to avoid unless they had specifically cleared a topic with him first. Old tales of crime (especially with a French or Italian setting), new developments in science (including the theories of Charles Darwin), lives and struggles of inventors, tales of exploration and adventure in distant parts, and examples of self-help among humble folk, are among the topics which found a ready welcome from Dickens.
After 1863, although Charles Dickens continued to micromanage the editorial department, scrupulously revising copy, his own contributions fell off considerably, largely because he spent more and more time on the road with his public readings.
A few weeks before 28 November 1868, Dickens announced a new series for All the Year Round: "I beg to announce to the readers of this Journal, that on the completion of the Twentieth Volume on the Twenty-eighth of November, in the present year, I shall commence an entirely New Series of All the Year Round. The change is not only due to the convenience of the public (with which a set of such books, extending beyond twenty large volumes, would be quite incompatible), but is also resolved upon for the purpose of effecting some desirable improvements in respect of type, paper, and size of page, which could not otherwise be made
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