ABSTRACT

As the nineteenth century came to an end, a number of voices within the British and American magazine industries pushed back against serialisation as the dominant publication mode, experimenting instead with less conventional magazine formats. This book explores these formats, focusing (in particular) on the ways in which the periodical press first published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Return of Sherlock Holmes. What led magazines to publish excerpts from a forthcoming book, or an entire novel in a single issue, or a discontinuous short-story series? How did these experimental modes affect the act of reading? Drawing on a range of archival and other primary sources, Literary Experiments in Magazine Publishing: Beyond Serialization addresses these and other questions.

chapter |12 pages

Introduction

Serialisation and Its Discontents

chapter 1|19 pages

Articles for Sale

Excerpting Huckleberry Finn in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine

chapter 2|22 pages

Assuming a Skeptical Attitude

Dorian Gray as Pseudo-Book in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine

chapter 3|22 pages

Between Intimacy and Distance

The Return of Sherlock Holmes as ‘The Ideal Compromise’ in The Strand Magazine and Collier’s Weekly

chapter |6 pages

Postscript

The Final Instalment