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Curated playlist

Novels first published in serial form

  • The Pickwick PapersCharles Dickens, then 24, was hired to write captions for comic sporting drawings. He knew nothing of sport.
  • The War of the WorldsIn The War of the Worlds, the Martians are beaten by germs. Earthly bacteria kill them, since they had no immunity.
  • Ulysses (novel)The novel Ulysses follows one ordinary day in Dublin, the 16th of June 1904. Its hero is a Jewish advertising canvasser.
  • Crime and PunishmentCrime and Punishment is less about the murder than about the killer's conscience.
  • The Brothers KaramazovDostoevsky died less than four months after The Brothers Karamazov finished publication.
  • The Three MusketeersIn The Three Musketeers, a broke young Gascon picks fights with three swordsmen and ends up fighting beside them.
  • Heart of DarknessJoseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness grew from a river trip he really took.
  • The Lost World (Doyle novel)The Lost World, a 1912 adventure novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, began with a startlingly bold ambition. While writing it, Doyle told his editor, Herbert Greenhough Smith: "My ambition is to do for the boys' book what Sherlock Holmes did…
  • The Red Badge of CourageStephen Crane wrote the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage without ever seeing a battlefield.
  • War and PeaceLeo Tolstoy insisted War and Peace was not a novel. He also said it was not a poem or a historical chronicle.
  • Ben DrownedA 2010 4chan post about a Nintendo 64 cartridge with someone else's save file became Ben Drowned.

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