Dickens planned his works to be released over 19 months (in 20 parts) and although he didn’t know exactly what shape the work would take at the beginning, he still wrote and shaped the story to unfold in a set number of installments. A better comparison is to the telenovela.

Oliver Twist was more haphazard, published basically wherever at irregular intervals while he was working on two other of those 20-part novels. A Tale of Two Cities was released weekly in a magazine. The Old Curiosity Shop started as a weekly magazine piece before switching to monthly stand-alone installments like the others. Hard Times, the worst of Dickens’ novels and an atypical one (think Dylan’s Self-Portrait), I think was weekly. I think Barnaby Rudge may have been screwy as well; I remember there was something significant about it besides it just sucking. Which it does.

The rest were in the 19 installments (the last a double.)