Because many Victorian novels first appeared serially in periodicals and only later appeared in book form, they bear the mark of writing in parts. Although Anthony Trollope and most other writers completed an entire novel before its first number appeared in print, Dickens composed his books as they went along in parts, and hence his works, which register his audience's reactions, have a unqiue dialogical relation to that that audience. Beginning with the pioneering work of John Butt and Kathleen Tillotson, scholars have studied both his working notes for individual novels and their division into periodical parts for clues to his ideas and methods.
 
 

The following list includes the most important studies of this approach to Dickens's novels:

• Butt, John, and Kathleen Tillotson. Dickens at Work. London, 1957.
• Boll, Ernest, "The Plotting of Our Mutual Friend, Modern Philology 42 (1944): 96-122.
• Herring, Paul D. "Dickens Monthly Number Plans for Little Dorrit," Modern Philology 64 (1966): 22-63.
• Patten, Robert L. Charles Dickens and His Publishers. Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1978. 18-19, 45-74.

The essential book on Dickens, copyright, publishing practice, the development of periodical publication, and their economic and literary implications. See especially pp. 45-74 and also 18-27.

• Stone, Harry. Dickens's Working Notes for His Novels.Chicago, 1987.

Richard D. Altick and John J. Fenstermacher Art of Literary Research (4th ed), which desribe this book "as the crowning achievement of this branch of Dickens studies," points out that it provides both photographic facsimile and "typographical approximations" of the author's notes .

• Sucksmith, Harvey Peter. "Dickens at Work on Bleak House: A Critical Examination of His Memoranda and Number Plans," Renaissance & Modern Studies 9 (1965): 47-85..

George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University
[Victorian initial "P" by Harlan Wallach ©copyright 1994.]