> Great Expectations was the 12th of Dickens's 13 completed novels and has been often hailed as one of his best. Like many of his novels, it was first published in weekly installments. For 36 weeks in 1860-1861, readers could buy copies of Harper's Weekly in the U.S. or the author's own magazine, All the Year Round, in England to find out what Pip, Estella and Miss Havisham would do next. Originally the story was to have been twice as long, but financial problems (another author's novel serialized in All the Year Round was not selling well) forced him to condense the action, resulting in one of his most acclaimed works. Most of Dickens's novels were originally published this way, written in installments for popular magazines made even more popular by his writing. As a result, each chapter has a complete feel to it until it moves into a final cliffhanger, designed to make readers eager to buy the next issue.

> The literary serial, a complete work published in several parts over a period of time, dates back to the 17th century, when the invention of movable type revolutionized the publishing industry. At that time, full-length books were too expensive for lower-income readers, but with more streamlined printing processes it was possible to sell books in shorter, less expensive installments called fascicles. With more improvements in printing technology and the rise of literacy, the serial format exploded in the 19th century, with many of that era's most prominent works originally appearing in weekly and monthly magazine installments. Dickens was a leader of the movement, but was matched in popularity by Alexandre Dumas pere and Gustave Flaubert in France, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry James in the U.S. and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who published most of his Sherlock Holmes adventures in serial form, in the U.K. The result was vivid, highly detailed storytelling combining memorable characters with thrilling plot turns. Although serialization has fallen out of fashion in literature with the rise of still more streamlined publishing technologies, it has hardly died out in other venues. Many television series, from soap operas to award-winning cable dramas, tell their stories in serial format, while comic books like the X Men have become more densely plotted and complex than anything Dickens could have envisioned.