Ketika surat kabar berbahasa Melayu sehari-hari muncul di Hindia Belanda pada pertengahan abad kesembilan belas, mereka melakukan lebih dari sekadar menerbitkan laporan berita dan iklan. Mereka juga menciptakan platform baru untuk penjualan dan distribusi fiksi sastra. Akibatnya, teks-teks sastra segera memainkan peranan penting dalam media cetak vernakular. Bagian pertama artikel ini menganalisis daya tarik sastra surat kabar dari sudut pandang pembaca dan editor secara umum dan memberikan survei terhadap berbagai bentuk genre sastra yang dapat ditemukan di surat kabar pada akhir abad kesembilan belas dan awal abad kedua puluh. Pada bagian kedua, satu novel berseri tertentu akan dibahas secara rinci untuk menunjukkan bagaimana cara penerbitan juga mempengaruhi cara penyampaian cerita.
KATA KUNCI
Indonesia; fiksi sastra; media; surat kabar; Surabaya.

When newspapers in the colloquial Malay language appeared in the Dutch East Indies in the middle of the nineteenth century, they did more than just publish news reports and advertisements. They also created a new platform for the selling and distribution of literary fiction. In effect, literary texts soon played an important role in the vernacular print media. The first part of this article analyses the attraction of newspaper literature from the perspective of both the reader and the editor in general and gives a survey of the various forms of literary genres which can be found in newspapers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In the second part, one particular serialized novel will be discussed in detail to demonstrate how the mode of publication also influenced the way stories were told.
KEYWORDS
Indonesia; literary fiction; media; newspapers; Surabaya.