Serialized novels were a popular thing to read in the Victorian era and Charles Dickens has an interesting history with them. He worked as a novelist, writing serialized novels for other people before he entered into the business himself. He eventually ran two magazines and published many outstanding novels in them including Great Expectation, a stunning example of the way that serialization changes writing styles.
In the 1850s, Charles Dickens was the editor of a weekly magazine, Household Words. Household Words was published by Bradbury and Evans, a printing and publishing company established in 1830. Its name was taken from a line in Shakespeare’s Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech. It provided three distinct article types each …show more content…
Whereas Dickens placed emphasis on journalism in Household Words, in All the Year Round he placed emphasis on novelism. Novels were not published all at once like they are today. Many novels were serialized in magazines, a technique that allowed a novelist to ensure that a wider audience viewed their work. Serialized novels had to be gripping, interesting, and usually have cliffhangers every installment, such as modern day serial television dramas Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead. If serialized novels did not get people’s attention and let them fixate on it, sales would dwindle and die out. This can be seen in the first serialized novel to be published in All the Year Round, Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (the most sold novel of all time at over 200 million copies). Every few chapters there is another question to be answered or mystery to solve. The publication of Dickens’s own novel had the desired effect of boosting initial sales. Another advantage of serializing novels, at least for Dickens himself because as editor he had the ability to give the typesetters his novels chapter by chapter, is the writer’s ability to listen to real time critiques about the novel and adjust accordingly. However, even with this advantage, writing a serialized novel is very difficult. It must work well in installments of, generally, two chapters and still be able to work as …show more content…
Great Expectations was serialized in weekly installments from December 1, 1860, to August 3, 1861. Dickens’s decision to publish his own novel in All the Year Round had the desired effect and sales spiked back up to normal levels. A quick examination of the way Great Expectations is set up reveals three main things. First, the novel has less than a page of exposition, the beginning of the plot where the characters and setting are established before getting to the main part of the story, probably as to arrive at the interesting parts of the novel so that people would continue to read it in All the Year Round; people do not like to read uninteresting stories. Secondly, at the end of every two chapters (sometimes one for a particularly long chapter) there is a repetition in theme, of sorts, that Dickens puts in there as a kind of “plot alliteration” to add continuity to his separated installments; the theme used to create this continuity changes throughout the novel. Lastly, the three volumes of the novel correspond with the three stages of Pip’s life that are described throughout; these stages are the following: Pip as a young boy, Pip as a gentleman, and Pip as someone trying to make amends to people he has wronged. These main things show that Great Expectations was
In the 1850s, Charles Dickens was the editor of a weekly magazine, Household Words. Household Words was published by Bradbury and Evans, a printing and publishing company established in 1830. Its name was taken from a line in Shakespeare’s Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech. It provided three distinct article types each …show more content…
Whereas Dickens placed emphasis on journalism in Household Words, in All the Year Round he placed emphasis on novelism. Novels were not published all at once like they are today. Many novels were serialized in magazines, a technique that allowed a novelist to ensure that a wider audience viewed their work. Serialized novels had to be gripping, interesting, and usually have cliffhangers every installment, such as modern day serial television dramas Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead. If serialized novels did not get people’s attention and let them fixate on it, sales would dwindle and die out. This can be seen in the first serialized novel to be published in All the Year Round, Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (the most sold novel of all time at over 200 million copies). Every few chapters there is another question to be answered or mystery to solve. The publication of Dickens’s own novel had the desired effect of boosting initial sales. Another advantage of serializing novels, at least for Dickens himself because as editor he had the ability to give the typesetters his novels chapter by chapter, is the writer’s ability to listen to real time critiques about the novel and adjust accordingly. However, even with this advantage, writing a serialized novel is very difficult. It must work well in installments of, generally, two chapters and still be able to work as …show more content…
Great Expectations was serialized in weekly installments from December 1, 1860, to August 3, 1861. Dickens’s decision to publish his own novel in All the Year Round had the desired effect and sales spiked back up to normal levels. A quick examination of the way Great Expectations is set up reveals three main things. First, the novel has less than a page of exposition, the beginning of the plot where the characters and setting are established before getting to the main part of the story, probably as to arrive at the interesting parts of the novel so that people would continue to read it in All the Year Round; people do not like to read uninteresting stories. Secondly, at the end of every two chapters (sometimes one for a particularly long chapter) there is a repetition in theme, of sorts, that Dickens puts in there as a kind of “plot alliteration” to add continuity to his separated installments; the theme used to create this continuity changes throughout the novel. Lastly, the three volumes of the novel correspond with the three stages of Pip’s life that are described throughout; these stages are the following: Pip as a young boy, Pip as a gentleman, and Pip as someone trying to make amends to people he has wronged. These main things show that Great Expectations was