"earlier chapters" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it when referring to preceding parts of a book that are organized as chapters. For example: "If you need to refer back to the earlier chapters, you can find them in the index."
There is some artful foreshadowing in earlier chapters.
The oxymoron makes one more skeptical about the earlier chapters.
Besides, anybody who expects the obvious has clearly not read the earlier chapters in this epic tale.
That is a pity, as the wit, clarity and concision of his earlier chapters on Europe, America and jihadism are bracing.
Will I be among those figures in 2006?" I found myself longing for the return of the ideal doctor of earlier chapters, and then I saw.
And as the characters evolve and grow up from chapter to chapter, each one had to somehow reconnect with the earlier chapters through the rhythm of the prose.
Especially in the earlier chapters, Powers's characters and his narrative can be nearly swamped by the scientific discourse and the metafictional divagations.
What I'm saying, longwindedly, is that I haven't been tempted yet to revisit earlier chapters, to put in anything that explains or underlines what happens later.
The earlier chapters of the settlement of the United States are "minimized in American history," John Worth, the lead archeologist at the site, said.
As they read it, the characters on the latest page are beginning to see what must have happened in the earlier chapters.
The last four chapters of the letter, a sharp and vigorous defense of Paul's apostolic authority, differ markedly in tone from the earlier chapters, suggesting that chapters 10 13 may have been written earlier, before Paul had received Titus' message.
