Experience Dickens in a serial format

Dickens, Re-Serialized

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Gordon Library’s Project Boz is using the Internet to help modern readers experience the novels of Dickens in their original, serialized form.

“We wanted to offer everyone the opportunity to encounter these novels as Victorian readers did,” said Kathy Markees, preservation librarian, WPI’s Gordon Library, and co-director of Project Boz with Lora Brueck, assistant director of collections. That doesn’t mean just chopping the text up into chunks. The library is digitizing the pages as searchable PDF images.

“Looking at the high-resolution scans we’ve made of the text, the delightful illustrations (which are not always included in modern printed editions), and the ads from publishers, tailors, apothecaries, and other merchants, is the closest you can come to experiencing these rarely seen serial parts short of holding them in your hands,” Markees said.

Most of the serials originally appeared monthly and cost one shilling per part, adding up to about 20 shillings for the whole novel. Weekly serial installments appeared in magazines which also contained other content and cost about two British pence an issue, adding up to about six shillings for the whole novel.