Editing Cliffhanger (section)

==History==
Cliffhangers were used as literary devices in several works of the [[Middle Ages]]. The [[Arabic literature|Arabic literary]] work ''[[One Thousand and One Nights]]'' involves [[Scheherazade]] narrating a [[List of stories within One Thousand and One Nights|series of stories]] to King [[Shahryār]] for 1,001 nights, with each night ending on a cliffhanger in order to save herself from execution.<ref name="Ellen">{{cite book|last1=Snodgrass|first1=Mary Ellen|title=Encyclopedia of the Literature of Empire.|date=2009|publisher=[[Infobase Publishing]]|location=New York|isbn=978-1438119069|page=292|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LXyyYs2cRDcC&pg=PT292}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Wiesner-Hanks|first1=Merry E.|title=Gender in History: Global Perspectives|date=2011|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=9781444351729|page=86|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v8tPlht9lyAC&pg=PT86|language=en}}</ref> Some medieval Chinese ballads like the ''Liu chih-yuan chu-kung-tiao'' ended each chapter on a cliffhanger to keep the audience in suspense.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Columbia History of Chinese Literature|url=https://archive.org/details/columbiahistoryc00mair|url-access=limited|pages=[https://archive.org/details/columbiahistoryc00mair/page/n823 797]–798|last1=Mair|first1=Victor H.|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=2001|isbn=9780231109840}}</ref>

The Scottish comic magazine ''[[The Glasgow Looking Glass]]'', founded by English artist [[William Heath (artist)|William Heath]]'','' pioneered the use of the phrase 'To Be Continued' in its serials in 1825.<ref>{{cite news |title='World's first comic' is up for auction|url=https://www.thetimes.com/article/worlds-first-comic-is-up-for-auction-wjxlz7npc |access-date=19 February 2022 |work=[[The Times]]|quote=William Heath's Glasgow Looking Glass was a pioneering publication which is said to have coined the phrase " . . . to be continued".}}</ref>

===Victorian serials===

[[File:Dickens and Nell Philly.JPG|thumb|upright=0.7|left|[[Dickens and Little Nell (Elwell)|''Dickens and Little Nell'']] statue in [[Philadelphia]] ]]
Cliffhangers became prominent with the serial publication of narrative fiction, pioneered by [[Charles Dickens]].<ref name="Dickens"/><ref name="Grossman"/><ref>{{cite news |title=Cliffhangers poised to make Dickens a serial winner again |url=https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/cliffhangers-poised-to-make-dickens-a-serial-winner-again-96jplgjhrp5 |access-date=3 September 2021 |work=[[The Times]] |archive-date=3 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210903003603/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cliffhangers-poised-to-make-dickens-a-serial-winner-again-96jplgjhrp5 |url-status=live }}</ref> Printed episodically in magazines, Dickens's cliffhangers triggered desperation in his readers. Writing in the ''New Yorker'', Emily Nussbaum captured the anticipation of those waiting for the next installment of Dickens' ''[[The Old Curiosity Shop]]'';

{{blockquote|In 1841, Dickens fanboys rioted on the dock of New York Harbor, as they waited for a British ship carrying the next installment, screaming, "Is little Nell dead?"<ref name="Dickens"/>}}

[[File:Publicité pour Great Expectations dans All the Year Round.jpeg|thumb|upright=1.2|Advertisement for ''[[Great Expectations]]'' serialised in the British weekly magazine ''[[All the Year Round]]'', 1860. The advert displays the plot device "to be continued".]]
On Dickens' instalment format and cliffhangers—first seen with ''[[The Pickwick Papers]]'' in 1836—Leslie Howsam in ''The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book'' (2015) writes, "It inspired a narrative that Dickens would explore and develop throughout his career. The instalments would typically culminate at a point in the plot that created reader anticipation and thus reader demand."<ref name="Howsam">{{cite book |last1=Howsam |first1=Leslie |title=The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book |date=2015 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=85}}</ref>

With each new instalment widely anticipated with its cliffhanger ending, Dickens' audience was enormous; his instalment format was also much more affordable and accessible to the masses, with the audience more evenly distributed across income levels than previous.<ref name="Howsam"/> The popularity of Dickens's serial publications saw the cliffhanger become a staple part of the sensation serials by the 1860s.<ref name="Allen">Allen, Rob (2014). ''Serialization in Popular Culture''. p. 41. Routledge</ref> His influence can also be seen in television soap operas and film series, with ''The Guardian'' stating "the DNA of Dickens's busy, episodic storytelling, delivered in instalments and rife with cliffhangers and diversions, is traceable in everything."<ref>{{cite news |title=Streaming: the best Dickens adaptations |url=https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/13/streaming-best-dickens-adaptations-film-tv-personal-history-david-copperfield-armando-iannucci |access-date=3 November 2022 |work=The Guardian |archive-date=3 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210903003923/https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jun/13/streaming-best-dickens-adaptations-film-tv-personal-history-david-copperfield-armando-iannucci |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Etymology===

The term "cliffhanger" is considered to have originated with the serialised version of [[Thomas Hardy]]'s ''[[A Pair of Blue Eyes]]'' (which was published in ''[[William Tinsley (publisher)|Tinsley's Magazine]]'' between September 1872 and July 1873) in which Henry Knight, one of the protagonists, is left hanging off a [[cliff]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Schulz |first=Kathryn |author-link=Kathryn Schulz |date=May 20, 2024 |title=The Secrets of Suspense |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/27/the-secrets-of-suspense |url-access=limited |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240520201237/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/27/the-secrets-of-suspense |archive-date=May 20, 2024 |access-date=May 21, 2024 |work=[[The New Yorker]] |quote=This is the plot device known as the cliffhanger, a word whose putative origins lie not in pulp fiction but in a lesser-known Thomas Hardy novel, "A Pair of Blue Eyes". In the relevant scene, a man named Henry Knight is strolling with his love interest along the cliffs of Cornwall when his hat blows off. He chases after it, one thing leads to another, and soon he is dangling from a sheer wall of rock, nothing beneath him but six hundred feet of air terminating in the fanged and foaming surface of the ocean.}}</ref><ref name="Hardy">{{cite web|last1=Diniejko|first1=Andrzej|title=Thomas Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes As a Cliffhanger with a Post-Darwinian Message|url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/diniejko6.html|website=The Victorian Web|access-date=27 January 2017|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202032925/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/diniejko6.html|archive-date=2 February 2017}}</ref> According to the Random House ''Historical Dictionary of American Slang'', the term's first use in print was in 1937.<ref>1994 edition, p. 433</ref>