The Experiment of Condensed Fiction in the <i>Review of Reviews</i>

Abstract The launch of the British Review of Reviews in 1890 saw an ambitious attempt by its editor, W. T. Stead, to reimagine the monthly miscellaneous magazine and the role of fiction within it. As the title suggests, its mission was to provide an overview of serial print, and it deployed forms of presentation that indexed, reduced, synthesized, and otherwise compressed large amounts of material for the reader. Like all other print materials, fiction was to be condensed in a bid to offer readers some engagement with fiction, but without the commitment of an extended serial rhythm. Condensed novels were one of the key features in the new monthly, which also sought to unite English-speaking readers across the globe. Stead’s vision was of a monthly that circulated far and wide and offered a universal medium through which to channel common ideas. This article explores Stead’s brief experiment with publishing condensed novels and notes that the failure of the experiment coincides with the decline of extended serial fiction in the magazines.