Editing Cliffhanger (section)

===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>