On the Subject of Dickens as Super-Celeb

[ellejir]

June wrote:
> Someone earlier on compared Charles Dickens to JKR in terms of
> their popularity at their respective times.  
> 
> I was going to reply to this, but have been unable to check my 
> facts, can anyone help me?
> 
> Dickens did not usually write books as books but rather as serials -
 
> now this was a guy who could really live with a deadline.  Many of 
> his most famous works were initially serialised in periodicals and 
> because there was very little in the way of alternative amusement, 
> his fans got very excited indeed about the next instalment of his 
> works (remind you of anything?).  There is a legendary and maybe 
> apocryphal tale about people in the US in the 19th Century 
> stampeding the docks as a ship arrived with the latest episode of 
> either Little Dorrit or perhaps it was the Old Curiousity Shop, and 
> in the stampede, several people got knocked into the water and 
> drowned. It may have been in Baltimore, not sure.
> 

Hmmmm.  That story is ringing a bell way back somewhere in my memory, 
but wasn't it that the people were calling from the docks up to the 
boats coming in from England: "Is Little Nell dead?"?

Elle (who has no idea who Little Nell was but is sure that there is a 
Dickens-lover and/or English major out there who will enlighten her)