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Serialized Fiction

Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick ClubWilliam Hall, of the British pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny Chap­man and Hall, wished to pub­lish a month­ly series of car­toons by the illus­tra­tor Robert Sey­mour, about the “Nim­rod Club,” the com­ic mis­ad­ven­tures of a group of Cock­ney sports­men. The car­toons would be the main thing, (think of Hogarth’s The Good Appren­tice, etc.) but there would be some sub­sidiary text, which would sup­plied by a young writer, who had recent­ly achieved some suc­cess. The writer was Charles Dick­ens. In 1836, short­ly after the first install­ment was pub­lished, hav­ing been reti­tled The Posthu­mous Papers of the Pick­wick ClubSey­mour com­mit­ted sui­cide. In an effort to sal­vage the project, Dick­ens, with his pub­lish­ers, under­took to enlarge the amount of text for the install­ments, even while a new illus­tra­tor was found. The project—the first time a new nov­el was being serialized–was an extra­or­di­nary suc­cess. How suc­cess­ful? Some four hun­dred copies of the first install­ment were pub­lished. As for the last install­ment, some forty thou­sand copies were pub­lished. Not only had a new writer—Charles Dickens—achieved fame, a new form of pub­li­ca­tion was also established—serialization. Why am I writ­ing about this? Because one of my books is cur­rent­ly being serialized.

To be continued .…

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