... which I was in the Feb. 5 posting that just preceded this:

I was revisiting Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens' last completed novel, yesterday and came across his postscript to it, written Sept. 2, 1865. He comments on his process of developing a mystery in the plot and then says:

"To keep for a long time unsuspected, yet always working itself out, another purpose originating in that leading incident, and turning it to a pleasant and useful account at last, was at once the most interesting and the most difficult part of my design. Its difficulty was much enhanced by the mode of publication; for, it would be very unreasonable to expect that many readers, pursuing a story in portions from month to month through nineteen months, will, until they have it before them complete, perceive the relations of its finer threads to the whole pattern which is always before the eyes of the story weaver at his loom. Yet, that I hold the advantages of the mode of publication to outweigh its disadvantages, may be easily believed of one who revived it in the Pickwick Papers after long disuse, and has pursued it ever since."

So Dickens thought publishing periodical installments of a novel had many advantages. But do they still outweigh the disadvantages, more than 140 years later?