The book is about three primary serial contributors to Once a Week during the critical period when it was featured as the rival magazine of Dickens’s All the Year Round. Divergent as their natures were, the three writers – Reade, Meredith and Martineau – took markedly different stands and separated themselves from the popular Dickensian trend in the competitive journalistic world. This study not just uncovers the long neglected Victorian weekly, but also writers of genuine originality and great thinkers. The three often underestimated writers and their serial publications represent cross-sections of the dynamic Victorian journalism. Discoveries of the Dickens’s «rival group» supplement Dickensian studies.