The nineteenth-century Victorian serial novel was a way for readers and writers to make a novel last years and be talked about endlessly like the daily soap opera of this century. The serial is an ongoing story that is told over time through installments with interruptions or stops. Its history will give great understanding to just how important Charles Dickens was to serial publication and how important serial publication was to nineteenth-century readers. The nineteenth-century serial novel was something readers looked forward to. Whether published alone or in a magazine, each monthly or weekly installment contained text readers could not wait to feast their eyes upon.
The continuing story of a serial is a literary example of the lengthened vision of nineteenth-century life (Hughes and Lund 2). Most readers of the serial were part of the working middle class. They were looking for a better way of life, for hopes and for dreams, and the serial offered this to them. The serial is a whole novel that is printed a part at a time, each installment being about ten pages. It became a popular format for fiction, poetry, and prose. With each installment the literary work grew from simple to more complex, from single character and plot to multiple characters and plot lines (Hughes and Lund 7). Some serials were published alone but most were published in magazines. For serials that were published in magazines, the installments contained the serials along with advertisements of almost anything from a to z. Even when poetry was being issued serially, it, too, was not alone. Surrounding it were other works of history, science, and politics. All forms of serials were put together nicely with illustrations to entice and amuse the reader even more.
However, the serial was not just a piece of writing for mere entertainment. It was more involved in the lifestyle of the nineteenth-century people than it was thought to be. The images of life in the nineteenth-century were focused on expansion, length, and richness (Hughes and Lund 1), and the serial illustrated this. Because the serial was a vision and an angle on stories about life in the Victorian times and culture, it enlightened people of all social classes, but especially the middle class. These people, like the characters in the novels, were looking for betterment. The reviews of serial novels depended on how well the stories depicted and envisioned the life that existed in the Victorian times (Hughes and Lund 2).
The serial initially began as a way to avoid an English tax. Newspapers were expected to pay a higher tax than they were initially paying on the paper they used to publish their work; they avoided the extra tax by using bigger sheets of paper and calling their newspapers pamphlets. However, these bigger sheets had more space for text, and serialization filled up this empty space. The "London Spy," the first serial, was issued in 1698. When the paper tax was finally repealed, serialization continued because readers enjoyed it so much. Newspapers and magazines alike included serials in their publication in order to gain more customers; "a popular serial could double readership" (Crawford 322). Publications of all types, including serials, were reduced due to the higher paper taxes. Serial novels made a comeback in the Victorian era with Charles Dickens and his Pickwick Papers in 1836. It was publishers Chapman and Hall who gave Dickens the chance to show his talent as a serial writer. They decided to release a series of sporting illustrations in installments with text narrating each picture. Robert Seymour was hired by Chapman and Hall to illustrate and Dickens to write the text. Due to Seymour's death, Dickens took control of the project with a new illustrator, Hablot Brown. The work they produced became known as the Pickwick Papers, each issue increasing in popularity.
Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund point out that beginning with Dickens, serial novels gave readers a taste of the Victorian philosophy on life. Victorians were almost obsessed with becoming better people and building a better life for themselves, and serials mirrored these beliefs that progress was slow but sure to come. Through serials, readers could see the type of changes and developments characters went through. Readers could also see that there was progress to be had, even if it was slow. Victorians thought of society as capable of achieving great things; serials were the main reason that readers had hope. Victorians felt a close connection to the serial, as if they were part of the making and outcome of the story, partly because in serial reading there is a definite investment. In order to learn the outcome of a single story, readers had to invest their time and feelings in the story line (Hughes and Lund 4). Installments allowed those feelings to grow and strengthen as readers committed themselves to years of waiting for the novel to end.
There are different views of why exactly people read serials. Some people read them as "serious entertainment" while others thought of them simply as "comical" (Hughes and Lund 5). Not everyone thought they were the literary expression of Victorian ideas about progress and personal achievement. Norman Feltes, who has studied the production of serial novels, says that the Victorian serial was just a "cheap-luxury" form of entertainment for the middle class (Hughes and Lund 4). Thus, the entertainment was in analyzing the installments of the novel and then discussing them. Readers enjoyed gathering to converse about their own assumptions of people, places, and events and particularly the outcome of the novel as it neared. We cannot comprehend how the amount of time it took to complete one novel greatly affected how the nineteenth-century readers viewed the serial. Thus, it is understood why serials were interpreted and viewed differently.
Despite the fact that some people liked them and some people did not, serials were in great demand during the Victorian era, so writers had to adjust their talents to accommodate serial readers. There was great pressure for writers at this time. Authors of serials had to capture and keep the reader's attention from the first installment to the last. Writers who could not keep up were susceptible to losing the security and contracts serials could promise. With publication came deadlines. Most authors did their best to stay a few installments ahead, some keeping right up with the deadlines, other falling behind, and the very rare finishing the book all at once. Charles Dickens himself would complain about upcoming deadlines and would write in his own notebooks and in a letter to friend, "I MUST WRITE" (qtd. in Crawford 324). Thus, his ambition to always write and to construct better things was part of his great success.
Ambition was not the only reason for Dickens' success with the serial. To begin with, he could turn out almost seventeen pages of text a week. What made him a real writer was the fact that he traveled to the places he had planned to write about in his works. Also, his training in writing at the newspaper as well as his experience in writing character sketches gave him advantages. Dickens also took the time to plot and carefully organize all of his writing. He became such a sensation to the Victorians because he became a part of the "Victorian rage for progress" (Crawford 325). He did this through his characters. Victorian writers expected Dickens to enlighten them with a character that "changed and improved, a character who embodied the promise of a betterment and a self-fulfillment" in each novel (Crawford 324).
What happened to the wonderful serial form and Dickens? In the nineteenth-century more serials came and went, but as full novels became more popular people were interested in them more and more. They allowed the readers to read at their own pace as well as re-read or look ahead. But in essence, serials never died, they just changed. We still see serials in episodic television, and juvenile serials were popular during the first half of the twentieth century. The serials of today are predictable and have a loss of characterization. "Gone were the rising stars in literature. In their place unspectacular writers took up the slack" (Crawford 326). Through it all Dickens' novels are still read, although not in serial form. He will be remembered for the serial writing that Victorians encountered.
Works Cited
Crawford, Shawn. No Time to Be Idle: The Serial Novel and Popular Imagination. Washington, D.C.: Washington P, 1991.
Hughes, Linda K., and Michael Lund. The Victorian Serial. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1991.
Sutherland, J.A. Victorian Novelists and Publishers. Chicago:
U of Chicago P, 1976.
Works Consulted
Jordan, John O., and Robert L. Patten. Literature in the Marketplace. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.
Price, Kenneth M., and Susan Belasco Smith. Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1995.