I love this so much. From Quartzy:
Spoilers have been infuriating people since Victorian times
The novelist Wilkie Collins had always been eclipsed by Charles Dickens, his friend and colleague, until The Woman in White began to be published as a serial from November 1859. The novel—an exhilarating mixture of intrigue, madness, and crime—was not only “sensational” in terms of its contents, but also in its public reception.
People queued outside the publisher’s offices for the next instalment and placed bets on the “secret” of its antagonist. Meanwhile perfumes and dances were named after it and William Gladstone, then the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer (as we know, he went on to serve four terms as prime minister) cancelled a theater visit so he could catch up with the newest developments.
There is nothing new under the sun…
