Those of us who Sunday-binge an entire series on Netflix in one sitting would be loath to consume Victorian novels. That\u2019s because of how books were produced and released in 19th century England\u2009\u2014\u2009as serialized installments in periodicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s that very idea that guides a new research project launched by Anna Gibson, an assistant teaching professor in the English department. The Digital Dickens Notes Project (DDNP) is an interactive website that reveals how that era\u2019s great novelist pieced together classics like David Copperfield<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Charles] Dickens was not only publishing all of his novels in serial installments. He was also writing them serially,\u201d says Gibson, who began the project years back as a Duke University Ph.D. student studying forms of the Victorian novel. \u201cHe was writing them while people were reading them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dickens\u2019 original working notes for his novels are in an archive in London. Gibson and Adam Grener, the project\u2019s co-director and a literature professor in New Zealand, visited the archive and transcribed the notes, also building in an exhaustive library of annotations to accompany them online. Visitors to the project\u2019s website interact digitally, seeing Dickens asking questions on the left side of a page, like what characters to include. And on the right, they see his formula\u2009\u2014\u2009chapter headings and summaries. \u201cYou can see him,\u201d Gibson says, \u201casking himself questions and then coming back later in a different ink to answer the question and changing his mind and crossing things out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the goal of adding three more, Gibson and her team have uploaded their work for the novels David Copperfield<\/em>, Bleak House<\/em>, Hard Times<\/em> and Little Dorrit<\/em>. The latter\u2019s notes show Dickens grappling with fitting in all his ideas, and that the novel\u2019s title protagonist didn\u2019t even appear in the first installment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe had a massive impact on the way that we tell stories, on the way we consume fiction.<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Gibson appreciates the project for what it shows about Dickens. \u201cHe had a massive impact on the way that we tell stories, on the way we consume fiction,\u201d she says. \u201cHe didn\u2019t invent serial fiction. But he did kind of shape it into its modern form.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n Those of us who Sunday-binge an entire series on Netflix in one sitting would be loath to consume Victorian novels. That\u2019s because of how books were produced and released in 19th century England\u2009\u2014\u2009as serialized installments in periodicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s that very idea that guides a new research project launched by Anna Gibson, an assistant teaching professor in the English department. The Digital Dickens Notes Project (DDNP) is an interactive website that reveals how that era\u2019s great novelist pieced together classics like David Copperfield<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Charles] Dickens was not only publishing all of his novels in serial installments. He was also writing them serially,\u201d says Gibson, who began the project years back as a Duke University Ph.D. student studying forms of the Victorian novel. \u201cHe was writing them while people were reading them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dickens\u2019 original working notes for his novels are in an archive in London. Gibson and Adam Grener, the project\u2019s co-director and a literature professor in New Zealand, visited the archive and transcribed the notes, also building in an exhaustive library of annotations to accompany them online. Visitors to the project\u2019s website interact digitally, seeing Dickens asking questions on the left side of a page, like what characters to include. And on the right, they see his formula\u2009\u2014\u2009chapter headings and summaries. \u201cYou can see him,\u201d Gibson says, \u201casking himself questions and then coming back later in a different ink to answer the question and changing his mind and crossing things out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the goal of adding three more, Gibson and her team have uploaded their work for the novels David Copperfield<\/em>, Bleak House<\/em>, Hard Times<\/em> and Little Dorrit<\/em>. The latter\u2019s notes show Dickens grappling with fitting in all his ideas, and that the novel\u2019s title protagonist didn\u2019t even appear in the first installment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe had a massive impact on the way that we tell stories, on the way we consume fiction.<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Gibson appreciates the project for what it shows about Dickens. \u201cHe had a massive impact on the way that we tell stories, on the way we consume fiction,\u201d she says. \u201cHe didn\u2019t invent serial fiction. But he did kind of shape it into its modern form.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An interactive website uses Charles Dickens\u2019 working notes to explore his creative process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":6129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"views\/single-immersive.blade.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-immersive-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"backgroundColor\":\"reynolds_400\",\"displayCategoryID\":0,\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"An interactive website uses Charles Dickens\u2019 working notes to explore his creative process.\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[1618,1615,1619,274,1617,1616,1622,1621],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-6127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newswire","category-stories","tag-adam-grener","tag-anna-gibson","tag-bleak-house","tag-college-of-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-david-copperfield","tag-digital-dickens-notes-project","tag-hard-times","tag-little-dorrit"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6127"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6149,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6127\/revisions\/6149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6127"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=6127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}