ABSTRACT
This chapter argues further that Conrad's fundamental aesthetic functions as a clear but partial palimpsest for Wells's spoof and, returning Tono-Bungay to its first periodical contexts, examines "Mordet Island" as Wells's modern, critical response to Patusan. It investigates Wells's response to the constraints and opportunities presented by the contemporary press and its transatlantic periodical fiction markets. Dramatic reorganization of the publishing industries of Great Britain and United States between 1880 and 1914 forms another important background, which finally links Wells's critique to particular changes in periodical publishing, regarding the development of agency, advertising, and literary authorship. Simultaneous transatlantic serialization of new novels was a defining feature of early twentieth-century British popular fiction. The chapter pays critical attention to novel's transatlantic serialization in both British literary magazine and popular American pulp magazine, moreover, and shows how important editorial changes to two different versions of episode's "first" serial appearance could dramatically alter readers' receptions of essentially the same text.
