Serialised fiction surged in popularity during Britain's Victorian era, due to a combination of the rise of literacy, technological advances in printing, and improved economics of distribution. If, on the other hand, the serialised book sold well, it was a good bet that bound volumes would sell well, too. These had the added attraction of allowing a publisher to gauge the popularity of a work without incurring the expense of a substantial print run of bound volumes: if the work was not a success, no bound volumes needed to be prepared. At that time, books remained a premium item, so to reduce the price and expand the market, publishers produced large works in lower-cost instalments called fascicles. The growth of moveable type in the 17th century prompted episodic and often disconnected narratives such as L'Astrée and Le Grand Cyrus.
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