Learn about Charles Dickens and his contributions to the serial publication genre
J.E. Luebering, director of Encyclopædia Britannica's Core Reference Group, discussing Charles Dickens and the serial publication of his novels.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Transcript
A serial publication in its most rudimentary form is just anything that is published at an interval. For Dickens what that meant was that he published all of his novels either weekly or monthly. Like a TV show today, every Thursday or every Friday a new installment would come out; people would acquire it and be very excited about it over the course of the novel. I think in many ways he invented serial publication. He very much inhabited it from the start, from the very first novel of "Pickwick Papers." Created a genre essentially that he used throughout his lifetime and that he was best known for.