Belgravia by Downton Abbey's Julian Fellowes now as an Episodic Series

In the summer of 2016, Downton Abbey creator, Julian Fellowes, released a widely acclaimed novel, Belgravia, set mainly in 1841 England. The story begins on June 15, 1815 at the Duchess of Richmond’s famous ball in Brussels and moves to London of 1841. I reviewed this book for All About Romance then.

Here is how I described it: "What a delightful, gossipy book this is. Julian Fellowes’ Belgravia has all the tightness and subtlety of the movie Gosford Park. It is written with the soaring arc of a saga and the delicacy of shifting emotions. At its core are two intense love stories spanning two generations and class boundaries. The women in this story, through their love for their men, shake up early 19th century aristocracy. It goes to show that people of all walks of life will do anything for the ones they love. If one were to ascribe a theme to the book, then it would be the exploration of the early Victorian English class system. As you read along, you appreciate the subtleties of class in society and how much of an impact it had on piddling day-to-day matters and grand dynastic changes, on life and death, on life’s choices and restrictions, on behavior and dress… on everything of any import. It is meticulous research rendered superbly well."

This year, the book is being released by the company, Serial Box, as a series of eBook and audio episodes, the first of which was released on March 1. Here's a brief excerpt of the first episode.

Serial Box releases serials through an app, their website, and third party retailers in both e-book and audio formats. Each new ~40-minute episode of the serials releases every week and serials typically run for seasons of 10-16 weeks. Individual episodes are $.199, but serial subscribers get the discounted rate of $1.59 for both the text and audio DRM-free versions of each new episode. A season's pass, paid upfront, for all the episodes is discounted further. The episodes get added to "My Library" and can be accessed from the iPhone app.

"Releasing Belgravia in app form was a step into the unknown for me, and so it’s very gratifying that, less than two years later, there is now a whole platform dedicated to serialized stories," says Julian Fellowes. "Serial Box is opening books for a whole new audience, which is something we can all celebrate."

When I first read the book, I noticed that Fellowes wrote his book in an episodic format, which has naturally lent itself to being serialized by Serial Box. The book’s divided into eleven episodes with scene breaks in each episode but no chapter breaks. So the usual chapter arcs, which break-up the narrative into small chunks, are missing, which I think is the strength of this novel. The longer episodic arcs work better for the narrative.