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George Eliot
always resisted the constraints and anxieties of writing in instalments,
but Middlemarch was much longer than any of her earlier
works. Rather than risk publication in four volumes, author and
publisher were persuaded to side-step the circulating libraries
by issuing the novel at two-monthly intervals, in eight half-volume
parts at 5 shillings each. The experiment was a modest success:
sales of each part, bound in 'attractive but not bookstallish' paper
covers, amounted to over 5,000 copies; Mudie's threatened boycott
of the novel failed to materialise; and Eliot found that part publication
(in this relatively relaxed form) suited the complexity and scope
of her story.
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