Lots of people were published in serialized form, as far as his reputation it was varied, most of his bad reputation was because of critics not liking the later novels. Certainly a lot of English writers had problems with him, and also American writers, but I've always put that somewhat down to jealousy. Russian writers were quite taken with him, Dostoevsky had a pretty high opinion.

So it's true that he had a variable reputation until the 1940s, but I'm not sure if it was due to a longing for saner times and not just the typical time for reappraisal some generations after a popular writer's death. If you think about it he died in 1870, so 70 years before his becoming more critically revered. Quite reasonable.