Charles Dickens and Serial Publishing

"There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts."

In any modern composition class a professor is likely to heavily emphasize the importance of repeated revision in order to perfect the final product of a piece of writing. Though I myself am guilty of limited revision (this blog may be a sad example of this) I've always known how much better any given essay, poem, or short story can be if it is revised. In fact I have a small novella that's been cooling somewhere in the basement of my hard drive for a number of years that is still in desperate need of revision. But ultimately what can make this valid bit of wisdom unstable is the strange anomaly of authors like Charles Dickens. Though he is one of the most prolific English novelists of the Victorian era his writing context essentially removed him from our conceptions of revision.

Top to Bottom: A Christmas Carol and other Christmas Stories, David Copperfield, David Copperfield (again, an old copy), Hard Times, The Old Curiosity Shop (and Hard Times in one volume, another old copy), and Oliver Twist (I apologize for the poor image quality. I was in a hurry this morning).

I would like to first point out a few technical items:
1) The first is, though Dickens takes up a considerable amount of space on my bookshelves, as you can see from the above photo, I must tragically admit that I've read far less of him than I own. I of course LOVE Great Expectations, but beyond Hard Times and A Christmas Carol and some of his other Holiday short stories I simply haven't been willing to devote the considerable chunk of time and mental energy to tackle another one of Dickens' monolithic volumes
2) I am glad to say, however, that Dickens is another one of those authors that I enjoy a particular amount of context for. Of course I've read a great deal of Victorian literature since I had once considered specializing in it, but I have also had the pleasure of visiting Dickens' house during my time in London and having the opportunity to understand more profoundly the literary figure that he cut during his time. In many ways I consider Dickens to be England's version of Mark Twain. In either case I got to collect this fantastic Jacob Marley door knocker at the museum's gift store, an ornament that now decorates my office/library door.

My brass Jacob Marley door knocker, just as he first appears in the book. At this point his face is described as having "a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar." On the plate beneath the face is the sculpted shape of a lobster...

Now back to that revision issue: Part of Charles Dickens literary significance lie in his genius scheme to market his writings. Dickens himself ran and published a periodical pamphlet containing one or two chapters of his current novels. In the Victorian period this did two things: first it made his stories accessible to a wider audience at a time when books and bindings were luxuries enjoyed solely by the bourgeois.  Secondly it allowed him to cash in on every chapter of a novel which, despite the constraint this put on him to produce stories at a rapid pace also provided motivation for drawing out his stories as much as possible especially once an audience had been hooked (there are countless examples of this in modern media albiet to significantly less literary merit. I'm looking at you, J.K. Rowling). This clearly is the root cause for the now massive and imposing books with Dickens' name on the spine (which is interesting since neither he nor his contemporary readers would have even seen his novels published in this way).

But if we compare this style of composition to modern methods we find that Dickens was uniquely capable of performing a rather intricate task. Whereas a novelist like James Joyce would never let a publisher even view his novel until it had been perfected in its complete form Dickens would write his first few chapters and send them directly to press hoping to heaven that he could manage to make something out of the rest of the story which may or may not have been fully planned. Also this causes a particular limitation on the writer since he must conform every subsequent chapter to the ones previously published since the narrative can no longer be changed to suit an incidental plot change later on. Undoubtedly this may be the source of many of his extended narratives; explaining away plot threads that were in need of resolution. Yet in the end we are left with countless iconic novels that seem to define the cultural landscape of Victorian England which is quite a feat for a writer under such constraint and speaks volumes to his ability to know his audience (although I have more to say on this subject in reference to Great Expectations in particular. But I will dedicate a complete blog to this subject).