ABSTRACT
Although the subject of popular entertainment was maintained in generally low profile in the fiction of Dickens's middle and late years, the periodical which he founded in 1850 gave him a major alternative outlet for its continued expression. In Household Words and its successor, All the Year Round, Dickens devoted a substantial proportion of space to a wide variety of public amusements. A number of essays on the subject he wrote himself, and some of them, in their wit, vigour and incisiveness, are among his outstanding pieces of journalism. A great many more were composed by hands other than his own but, as Harry Stone has demonstrated, Dickens kept strict control over the contents and the perspectives of Household Words. 1 Every pair of facing pages bore the imprimatur 'Conducted by Charles Dickens', and it was axiomatic that the entertainments of the people were to be fostered and defended. His policy was emphatically not undiscriminating - amusements judged to be dangerous, degrading or morally corrosive were firmly disapproved of - but the hallmark of the journals' treatment of popular entertainment was broad toleration and warm support.
