We take this opportunity of announcing a design, closely associated with
our Household Words, which we have now matured, and which we hope will
be acceptable to our readers.
We purpose publishing, at the end of each month as a supplementary
number to the monthly part of Household Words, a comprehensive Abstract
or History of all the occurrences of that month, native and foreign,
under the title of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE OF CURRENT EVENTS.
The size and price of each of these numbers will be the same as the size
and price of the present number of Household Words. Twelve numbers will
necessarily be published in the course of the year—one for each
month—and on the completion of the Annual Volume, a copious Index will
appear, and a title-page for the volume; which will then be called THE
HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE of such a year. It will form a complete Chronicle of
all that year’s events, carefully compiled, thoroughly digested, and
systematically arranged for easy reference; presenting a vast mass of
information that must be interesting to all, at a price that will render
it accessible to the humblest purchasers of books, and at which only our
existing machinery in connexion with this Work would enable us to
produce it.
The first number of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE will appear as a supplement
to the first monthly part of Household Words, published at the end of
the present month of APRIL. As the Volume for 1850 would be incomplete
(in consequence of our not having commenced this publication at the
beginning of a year) without a backward reference to the three months of
JANUARY, FEBRUARY, and MARCH, a similar number of THE HOUSEHOLD
NARRATIVE for each of those months will be published before the year is
out.
It is scarcely necessary to explain that it is not proposed to render
the purchase of THE HOUSEHOLD NARRATIVE compulsory on the purchasers of
Household Words; and that the supplementary number, though always
published at the same time as our monthly part, will therefore be
detached from it, and published separately.
Nor is it necessary for us, we believe, to expatiate on our leading
reasons for adding this new undertaking to our present enterprise. The
intimate connexion between the facts and realities of the time, and the
means by which we aim, in Household Words, to soften what is hard in
them, to exalt what is held in little consideration, and to show the
latent hope there is in what may seem unpromising, needs not to be
pointed out. All that we sought to express in our Preliminary Word, in
reference to this work, applies, we think, to its proposed companion. As
another humble means of enabling those who accept us for their friend,
to bear the world’s rough-cast events to the anvil of courageous duty,
and there beat them into shape, we enter on the project, and confide in
its success.