/lit/ - Literature

>>13016812
Don't you think Dickens' tendency to sprawl off that way, I mean, obviously that's picaresque tradition, but couldn't that owe in part due to the medium of serial publication?

I would be curious to know how often writers such as Austen, Eliot, James, and Conrad serialized their novels compared to more down-to-earth novelists such as Dickens and Balzac.

I think modern novels are more sleek partially because authors do not write sections of them to meet deadlines for serial publication. For example they say Ulysses by Joyce waffles the way it does partially because he is more or less improvising on the cuff to meet deadlines.