Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
Yes, his serials were hugely popular. There is a story - I don’t know if it’s true, but it ought to be - that when The Old Curiosity Shop was at a critical stage for Little Nell, winter storms in the Atlantic stopped the ships from sailing across with the next part of the serial. When the ship finally arrived in New York, the wharves were packed with people, calling up to the people on the ship “Did she die?”
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Yes, I can remember reading that somewhere decades ago. Some of the people waiting on the wharf were probably printer's devils, waiting to grab a copy to recopy. That's one of the reasons Dickens went on lecture tours in The U.S. - so he could get the revenue from performances that couldn't be pirated.
Here is an article from The Atlantic about the renaissance of serialization, that starts with a similar annecdote:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...riller/309235/