Martin Chuzzlewit came out in monthly numbers, which meant Dickens got a sales report on his novel while he was still writing it. The numbers were bad. His response was to ship his hero off to America in the middle of the serial, to lift the sales.
As a creative decision that is stranger than it sounds. The plot moved continents because the sales figures moved. Serial publication gave the market a vote on every instalment, and here the market voted for a change of scenery.
The cost landed somewhere else. The American chapters were satire, and they enraged an American press that was already hostile. So a fix aimed at one audience inflamed another, and he paid for it in reputation on the other side of the Atlantic.
What I find useful about this case is that it strips the romance from serial writing. We like to picture Dickens following his characters wherever they led. Here he was following a number, and the book still carries the seam where he turned.
Does knowing the America section was a sales decision change how you read it, or did every serial novelist work this way?