In literature, a serial is a printing or publishing format by which a single larger work, often a work of narrative fiction, is published in smaller, sequential installments. The installments are also
Advertisement for Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, serialised weekly in the literary magazine All the Year Round from December 1860 to August 1861
The protagonist, Edmond Dantès, was a merchant sailor before his imprisonment. (Illustration by Pierre-Gustave Staal)