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{{Short description|Long fictional narrative story}}
{{refimprove|date=August 2025}}
{{other uses}}
[[File:Madame de Pompadour.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Madame de Pompadour]] spending her afternoon with a book ([[François Boucher]], 1756)]]
{{Literature}}
A '''novel''' is an extended work of [[narrative]] [[fiction]] usually written in [[prose]] and [[Publication|published]] as a [[book]].<ref>"Novel", ''A Glossary of Literary Terms'' (9th Edition), M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Gall Harpham, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston, 2009, p. 226.</ref> The word derives from the {{Langx|it|novella|links=no}} for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the {{langx|la|novella|links=no}}, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning 'new'.<ref>''Britannica Online Encyclopedia'' [https://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9110453/novel] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080725181426/http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9110453/novel |date=2008-07-25 }} accessed 2 August 2009</ref> According to [[Margaret Doody]], the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the [[Ancient Greek novel|Ancient Greek]] and [[Roman novel]], Medieval [[chivalric romance]], and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance [[novella]].<ref name="The True Story of the Novel">Margaret Anne Doody, [https://archive.org/details/truestoryofnovel0000dood/page/1 ''The True Story of the Novel'']. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p.&nbsp;1. Retrieved 25 April 2014.</ref> The ancient romance form was revived by [[Romanticism]], in the [[historical romance]]s of [[Walter Scott]] and the [[Gothic novel]].<ref>J. A. Cuddon, ''Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory'', ed., 4th edition, revised C. E. Preston. London: Penguin, 1999, pp. 76o-2.</ref> Some novelists, including [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]],<ref>''[[The Scarlet Letter: A Romance]]''</ref> [[Herman Melville]],<ref>Melville described ''[[Moby Dick]]'' to his English publisher as "a romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries," and promised it would be done by the fall. Herman Melville in {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nBeBBc3m4yYC |title=Correspondence |date=1993 |publisher=Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library |isbn=0-8101-0995-6 |editor-last=Horth |editor-first=Lynn |series=The Writings of Herman Melville |volume=Fourteen |location=Evanston and Chicago}}</ref> [[Ann Radcliffe]],<ref>William Harmon & C, Hugh Holmam, ''A Handbook to Literature'' (7th edition), p. 237.</ref> and [[John Cowper Powys]],<ref>See ''[[A Glastonbury Romance]]''.</ref> preferred the term [[Romance (literary fiction)|''romance'']]. Such romances should not be confused with the [[genre fiction]] [[romance novel]], which focuses on romantic love. [[M. H. Abrams]] and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, like [[Harper Lee]]'s ''[[To Kill a Mockingbird]]''.<ref>{{cite web |date=16 June 2008 |title=To Kill a Mockingbird voted greatest novel of all time |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2138827/To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-voted-Greatest-Novel-Of-All-Time.html |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2138827/To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-voted-Greatest-Novel-Of-All-Time.html |archive-date=2022-01-11 |website=[[The Daily Telegraph]]}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="Whitfield">{{cite journal |last1=Moraru |first1=Christian |date=1997 |title=From Gnosticism to "Containment": The American Novel in the Age of Suspicion |journal=Studies in the Novel |volume=29 |issue=4 |pages=561–567 |jstor=29533235}}</ref> The romance, on the other hand, encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents.<ref>M. H. Abrams, ''A Glossary of Literary Terms'' (7th edition), p. 192.</ref><ref>"Essay on Romance", ''Prose Works'' volume vi, p.&nbsp;129, quoted in "Introduction" to Walter Scott's ''Quentin Durward'', ed. Susan Maning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p.&nbsp;xxv.</ref><ref>See also, Nathaniel Hawthorne's, "Preface" to ''[[The House of Seven Gables|The House of Seven Gables: A Romance]]'', 1851. External link to the "Preface" below)</ref> In reality, such works are nevertheless also commonly called novels, including [[Mary Shelley]]'s ''[[Frankenstein]]''<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/11/100-best-novels-frankenstein-mary-shelley|title=The 100 best novels: No 8 – Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)|website=[[The Guardian]]|date=11 November 2013|access-date=31 May 2020|archive-date=4 June 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210604183130/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/11/100-best-novels-frankenstein-mary-shelley|url-status=live}}</ref> and [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]''.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/the-lord-of-the-rings-1954-by-j-r-r-tolkien/ |title=All-TIME 100 Novels |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=8 January 2010 |last1=Grossman |first1=Lev |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120114162827/https://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/the-lord-of-the-rings-1954-by-j-r-r-tolkien/ |archive-date=2012-01-14 |access-date=2020-05-31 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of the vernacular [[Four Great Classical Novels|classic Chinese novels]] during the [[Ming dynasty#Literature and arts|Ming dynasty]] (1368–1644), and [[Qing dynasty]] (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan]]'' by the [[Sufi]] writer [[Ibn Tufail|Ibn Tufayl]] in [[Muslim Spain]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Hayy ibn Yaqzan {{!}} Encyclopedia.com|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/hayy-ibn-yaqzan|website=encyclopedia.com|access-date=2020-05-02|archive-date=2016-10-27|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161027215725/https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/hayy-ibn-yaqzan|url-status=live}}</ref> Later developments occurred after the [[Spread of the printing press|invention of the printing press]]. [[Miguel de Cervantes]], author of ''[[Don Quixote]]'' (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European [[novelist]] of the [[modern era]].<ref name="Merriam-Webster 1995">''Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature''.  Kathleen Kuiper, ed. 1995. Merriam-Webster, Springfield, Mass.</ref> Literary historian [[Ian Watt]], in ''The Rise of the Novel'' (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century with ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]''.<ref name="h011">{{cite book | last=Peraldo | first=Emmanuelle | title=300 Years of Robinsonades | publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing | date=2020-03-10 | isbn=978-1-5275-4840-4 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZUfhDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 | access-date=2025-08-06 | page=4 | quote=And it is precisely the middle class that [[Ian Watt]] (1957) considers as a defining characteristic of the emerging genre of the novel: Watt sees the novel as a genre that developed in the social context of the rise of the Middle Class in England in the first half of the eighteenth century and Defoe has been considered by many critics, including Watt, as one of the fathers of the novel. In ''The Rise of the Novel; Studies in Defoe'', Richardson and Fielding (whose subtitle clearly mentions Defoe as an actor in the rise of the genre), lan Watt wrote that "''Robinson Crusoe'' is certainly the first novel in the sense that it is the first fictional narrative in which an ordinary person's daily activities are the center of continuous literary attention." (Watt 1957, 74) There have been disagreements on that issue, and some critics have voiced their hesitations on Robinson Crusoe as the first novel, in ''Reconsidering the Rise of the Novel'' (2000) for example. As for Defoe himself, he would never have called his writings "novels" and the "novel" is a label that was given by critics later in the eighteenth century. | archive-date=2025-08-27 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250827191500/https://books.google.com/books?id=ZUfhDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 | url-status=live }}</ref>

Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes [[audio book]]s, [[web novel]]s, and [[ebook]]s. Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in [[graphic novel]]s. While these [[comic book]] versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular recently.

==Defining the genre==
{{More citations needed|section|date=December 2024}}
[[File:Tosa Mitsuoki—Portrait of Murasaki Shikibu.jpg|thumb|Paper as the essential carrier: [[Murasaki Shikibu]] writing her ''[[The Tale of Genji]]'' in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction]]
A novel is a long, fictional narrative. The novel in the [[modern era]] usually makes use of a [[Literature|literary prose style]]. The development of the prose novel at this time was encouraged by innovations in [[printing]], and the introduction of cheap paper in the 15th century. Printing, in turn, can be used as a way to identify novels, especially in the period before the 1790s when the term came into use.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Jordan Alexander Stein |title=When Novels Were Books |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2020 |isbn=9780674987043}}</ref>

Several characteristics of a novel might include:

*Fictional narrative: [[Fiction]]ality is most commonly cited as distinguishing novels from [[historiography]].{{citation needed|date=December 2024}} However this can be a problematic criterion.{{citation needed|date=December 2024}} Throughout the [[early modern period]] authors of historical narratives would often include inventions rooted in traditional beliefs in order to embellish a passage of text or add credibility to an opinion. Historians would also invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the other hand, depict the social, political and personal realities of a place and period with clarity and detail not found in works of history. Several novels, for example [[Ông cố vấn]] written by [[Hữu Mai]], were designed to be and defined as a "non-fiction" novel which purposefully recorded historical facts in the form of a novel.{{citation needed|date=December 2024}}
*Literary prose: While prose rather than verse became the standard of the modern novel, the [[Ancestor|ancestors]] of the modern European novel include verse epics in the [[Romance languages|Romance language]] of southern France, especially those by [[Chrétien de Troyes]] (late 12th century), and in [[Middle English]] ([[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ({{Circa|1343}} – 1400) ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'').<ref>Doody (1996), pp.&nbsp;18–3, 187.</ref> Even in the 19th century, fictional narratives in verse, such as [[Lord Byron]]'s ''[[Don Juan (Byron)|Don Juan]]'' (1824), [[Alexander Pushkin]]'s ''[[Eugene Onegin|Yevgeniy Onegin]]'' (1833), and [[Elizabeth Barrett Browning]]'s ''[[Aurora Leigh]]'' (1856), competed with prose novels. [[Vikram Seth]]'s ''[[The Golden Gate (Vikram Seth novel)|The Golden Gate]]'' (1986), composed of 590 [[Onegin stanza]]s, is a more recent example of the verse novel.<ref>Doody (1996), p.&nbsp;187.</ref>
* Experience of intimacy: Both in 11th-century Japan and 15th-century Europe, prose fiction created intimate reading situations. [[Harold Bloom]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bloom |first1=Harold |title=Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds |date=2002 |publisher=Fourth Estate |isbn=978-1-84115-398-8 |page=294 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oGAQAQAAIAAJ |access-date=19 December 2021}}</ref> characterizes [[Murasaki Shikibu|Lady Murasaki]]'s use of intimacy and irony in ''[[The Tale of Genji]]'' as "having anticipated Cervantes as the first novelist." On the other hand, verse epics, including the ''[[Odyssey]]'' and ''[[Aeneid]]'', had been recited to select audiences, though this was a more intimate experience than the performance of plays in theaters.
{{citation needed||reason=who was the audience and which time period|date=December 2024}} A new world of individualistic fashion, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, "conduct", and "gallantry" spread with novels and the associated [[chivalric romance|prose-romance]].
* Length: The novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose fiction, followed by the [[novella]]. However, in the 17th century, critics saw the romance as of epic length and the novel as its short rival. A precise definition of the differences in length between these types of fiction, is, however, not possible. The philosopher and literary critic [[György Lukács]] argued that the requirement of length is connected with the notion that a novel should encompass the totality of life.<ref>[[György Lukács]] ''The Theory of the Novel. A historico-philosophical essay on the forms of great epic literature'' [first German edition 1920], transl. by Anna Bostock (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1971).</ref> Another idea, from the English novelist [[E. M. Forster]], is that a novel should be composed with at least fifty-thousand words.<ref name="nctb2023">{{cite book|title=সহপাঠ|trans-title=Co-lesson|publisher=[[National Curriculum and Textbook Board]], [[Dhaka]], [[Bangladesh]]|date= October 2023|page=2|volume=Classes XI-XII and Alim|lang=bn}}</ref>

==Early novels==
{{see also|Ancient Greek novel|Byzantine novel}}

The earliest novels include classical Greek and Latin prose narratives from the first century BC to the second century AD, such as [[Chariton]]'s ''[[Callirhoe (novel)|Callirhoe]]'' (mid 1st century), which is "arguably the earliest surviving Western novel",<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morgan |first1=J. R. |author1-link=J. R. Morgan |editor1-last=Reardon |editor1-first=B. P. |editor1-link=Bryan Peter Reardon |title=Collected Ancient Greek Novels |date=2019 |publisher=University of California Press |location=Oakland, CA |isbn=978-0-520-30559-5 |page=xvi |edition=3rd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gnKxDwAAQBAJ&q=%22narrative+fiction+in+prose+imaginative%22&pg=RA1-PA1 |chapter=Foreword to the 2008 edition}}</ref> as well as [[Petronius Arbiter|Petronius]]' ''[[Satyricon]]'', [[Lucian]]'s ''[[A True Story|True Story]]'', [[Apuleius]]' ''[[The Golden Ass]]'', and the anonymous ''[[Aesop#The Aesop Romance|Aesop Romance]]'' and ''[[Alexander Romance]].'' These works were often influenced by oral traditions, such as storytelling and myth-making, and reflected the cultural, social, and political contexts of their time. Afterwards, their style was adapted in later [[Byzantine novel]]s such as ''Hysimine and Hysimines'' by [[Eustathios Makrembolites]]<ref name="Morgan & Stoneman">John Robert Morgan, Richard Stoneman, ''Greek fiction: the Greek novel in context'' (Routledge, 1994), Gareth L. Schmeling, and Tim Whitmarsh (hrsg.) ''The Cambridge companion to the Greek and Roman novel'' (Cambridge University Press 2008).</ref> Narrative forms were also developed in Classical Sanskrit in India during the 5th through 8th centuries. ''[[Vasavadatta]]'' by [[Subandhu]], ''[[Daśakumāracarita]]'' and ''[[Avantisundarīkathā]]'' by [[Daṇḍin]], and ''[[Kadambari]]'' by [[Banabhatta]] are among notable works. These narrative forms were influenced by much older classical Sanskrit [[Indian_classical_drama#Plays|plays]] and [[Indian classical drama]] literature, as well as by oral traditions and religious texts.<ref>{{cite web |title=Sanskrit Dramas – Asian Traditional Theatre & Dance |url=https://disco.teak.fi/asia/sanskrit-dramas/}}</ref>

===In China===
{{see also|Classic Chinese Novels}}

[[File:WUL-he21 02761 遊仙窟.pdf|thumb|page=60|The ''[[You Xian Ku]]'' by [[Zhang Zhuo]]]]
The 7th-century Chinese narrative prose work ''[[You Xian Ku]]'' written by [[Zhang Zhuo]] is considered by some to be one of the earliest "romances" or "novels" of the [[Tang dynasty]],<ref>朴銀美, パクギンミ. 研究発表 『伊勢物語』 の構想とその世界―『遊仙窟』 と 『崔致遠伝』 との比較を通して―. In国際日本文学研究集会会議録 1999 Oct 1 (No. 22, pp. 9-32). 国文学研究資料館 (in Japanese). ("第一に,唐代最初であり,最古の恋愛小説であった『遊仙窟』")  ("First, "Youxianku", the oldest romance novel from the Tang dynasty.")</ref><ref name=youxian>{{cite web|title=中国・唐の伝奇小説「遊仙窟」 最古の写本、99年かけて後半発見|language=ja|url=https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASQ8L3V87Q89PLZB00W.html|date=18 August 2022|newspaper=[[The Asahi Shimbun]]|quote=(translation): The Chinese Tang dynasty novel "Yusenkutsu" [''You Xian Ku''] is said to be the first novel to come to Japan. In the oldest surviving manuscript at Kongoji Temple in Kawachi Nagano City, Osaka Prefecture, the second half of the manuscript, which was previously missing, has been found. ...  "Yusenkutsu" is the work of Zhang Wencheng. It is said to have been introduced to Japan during the Nara period. ... It is also characterized by its fluent writing style, witty dialogue and poetry, and Tomohide Uesugi, a researcher at the Kyoto National Museum (Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto), who discovered the missing parts, said, "Nowadays, it can be considered as a cutting-edge foreign drama, known for its famous writing, and has influenced the ''[[Man'yōshū]]'' and ''[[The Tale of Genji]]'', and has been read in Japan for a long time".|access-date=11 November 2024|archive-date=11 November 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241111065637/https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASQ8L3V87Q89PLZB00W.html|url-status=live}}</ref> and it was influential on later works of fiction in East Asia.<ref name=youxian/>

Urbanization and the spread of printed books in [[Song dynasty]] (960–1279){{citation needed|date=December 2021}} led to the evolution of oral storytelling, ''[[chuanqi (short story and novella)|chuanqi]]'' and ''[[huaben]]'', into long-form multi-volume vernacular fictional [[Four Great Classical Novels|novels]] by the [[Ming dynasty#Literature and arts|Ming dynasty]] (1368–1644).

==Medieval period: 1100–1500==
The European developments of the novel did not occur until after the invention of the printing press by [[Johannes Gutenberg]] around 1439, and the rise of the publishing industry over a century later.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia| url=https://www.britannica.com/technology/printing-press| title=Printing press &#124; History & Types| encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Britannica| date=10 September 2024| access-date=9 March 2018| archive-date=29 September 2023| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230929122331/https://www.britannica.com/technology/printing-press| url-status=live}}</ref> Long European works continued to be in poetry in the 16th century.  

===Chivalric romances===
{{Main|Chivalric romance}}
[[File:Chaucer Troilus frontispiece.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]] reciting ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]'': early-15th-century manuscript of the work at [[Corpus Christi College, Cambridge]]]]
Romance or chivalric romance is a type of [[narrative]] in [[prose]] or [[Verse (poetry)|verse]] popular in the aristocratic circles of [[High Middle Ages|High Medieval]] and [[Early Modern Europe]]. They were marvel-filled [[adventure]]s, often of a [[knight-errant]] with [[hero]]ic qualities, who undertakes a [[quest]], yet it is "the emphasis on heterosexual love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the {{Lang|fro|[[chanson de geste]]}} and other kinds of [[epic poetry|epic]], which involve heroism."<ref>"Chivalric romance", in Chris Baldick, ed., ''Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms'', 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008).</ref> In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of [[courtly love]].

Originally, romance literature was written in [[Old French]], [[Anglo-Norman language|Anglo-Norman]] and [[Occitan language|Occitan]], later, in [[English language|English]], [[Italian language|Italian]] and [[German language|German]]. During the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose.

The shift from verse to prose dates from the early 13th century; for example, the ''[[Romance of Flamenca]]''. The ''[[Lancelot-Grail|Prose Lancelot]]'' or ''Vulgate Cycle'' also includes passages from that period. This collection indirectly led to [[Thomas Malory]]'s ''[[Le Morte d'Arthur]]'' of the early 1470s. Prose became increasingly attractive because it enabled writers to associate popular stories with serious histories traditionally composed in prose, and could also be more easily translated.<ref>See [[William Caxton]]'s preface to his 1485 edition.</ref>

Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with [[Irony|ironic]], [[Satire|satiric]] or [[Burlesque (literature)|burlesque]] intent. Romances reworked [[legend]]s, [[fairy tale]]s, and history, but by about 1600 they were out of fashion, and [[Miguel de Cervantes]] famously [[burlesque]]d them in ''[[Don Quixote]]'' (1605). Still, [[Medievalism|the modern image of the medieval]] is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word "medieval" evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and such tropes.<ref>[[C. S. Lewis]], ''[[The Discarded Image]]'', p.&nbsp;9 {{ISBN|0-521-47735-2}}</ref>

===The novella===
{{Main|Novella}}
The term "novel" originates from the production of short stories, or [[novella]] that remained part of a European oral culture of storytelling into the late 19th century. Fairy tales, jokes, and humorous stories designed to make a point in a conversation, and the [[exemplum]] a priest would insert in a sermon belong into this tradition. Written collections of such stories circulated in a wide range of products from practical compilations of examples designed for the use of clerics to compilations of various stories such as [[Giovanni Boccaccio|Boccaccio]]'s ''[[The Decameron]]'' (1354) and [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' (1386–1400). ''The Decameron'' was a compilation of one hundred novelle told by ten people&nbsp;— seven women and three men&nbsp;— fleeing the [[Black Death]] by escaping from [[Florence]] to the Fiesole hills, in 1348.

==Renaissance period: 1500–1700==
[[File:1474 Melusine Ausgabe Augsburg Johann Bämler Blatt 2.png|thumb|1474: The customer in the copyist's shop with a book he wants to have copied. This illustration of the first printed German [[Melusine]] looked back to the market of manuscripts.]]

The modern distinction between history and fiction did not exist in the early sixteenth century and the grossest improbabilities pervade many historical accounts found in the early modern print market. [[William Caxton]]'s 1485 edition of [[Thomas Malory]]'s ''[[Le Morte d'Arthur]]'' (1471) was sold as a true history, though the story unfolded in a series of magical incidents and historical improbabilities. [[Sir John Mandeville]]'s ''Voyages'', written in the 14th century, but circulated in printed editions throughout the 18th century,<ref>The [[English Short Title Catalogue|ESTC]] notes 29 editions published between 1496 and 1785 [http://estc.bl.uk/F/YMU7APITB3P8CLP4R6J16RSRKXTRGRN9HE79F36U1UPQP8QVU9-05108?func=short-sort&set_number=093136&sort_option=01---A02---A ESTC search result] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160128182018/http://estc.bl.uk/F/YMU7APITB3P8CLP4R6J16RSRKXTRGRN9HE79F36U1UPQP8QVU9-05108?func=short-sort&set_number=093136&sort_option=01---A02---A |date=2016-01-28 }}</ref> was filled with natural wonders, which were accepted as fact, like the one-footed Ethiopians who use their extremity as an umbrella against the desert sun. Both works eventually came to be viewed as works of fiction.

In the 16th and 17th centuries two factors led to the separation of history and fiction. The invention of printing immediately created a new market of comparatively cheap entertainment and knowledge in the form of [[chapbooks]]. The more elegant production of this genre by 17th- and 18th-century authors were ''[[belles lettres]]—''that is, a market that would be neither low nor academic. The second major development was the first best-seller of modern fiction, the Spanish ''[[Amadis de Gaula]]'', by García Montalvo. However, it was not accepted as an example of ''belles lettres''. The ''Amadis'' eventually became the archetypical romance, in contrast with the modern novel which began to be developed in the 17th century.

===In Japan===
Many different genres of literature made their debut during the [[Edo period]] in Japan, helped by a rising literacy rate among the growing population of townspeople, as well as the development of lending libraries. [[Ihara Saikaku]] (1642–1693) might be said to have given birth to the modern consciousness of the novel in Japan, mixing vernacular dialogue into his humorous and cautionary tales of the pleasure quarters, the so-called {{transliteration|ja|Ukiyozōshi}} ("[[Ukiyo-zōshi|floating world]]") genre. Ihara's ''Life of an Amorous Man'' is considered the first work in this genre. Although Ihara's works were not regarded as high literature at the time because it had been aimed towards and popularized by the {{transliteration|ja|[[chōnin]]}} (merchant classes), they became popular and were key to the development and spread of {{transliteration|ja|ukiyozōshi}}.

===Heroic romances===
{{main|Heroic romances|17th-century French literature}}
Heroic Romance is a genre of imaginative literature, which flourished in the 17th century, principally in France.

The beginnings of modern fiction in France took a pseudo-[[bucolic]] form, and the celebrated ''[[L'Astrée]]'', (1610) of [[Honore d'Urfe]] (1568–1625), which is the earliest French novel, is properly styled a [[pastoral]]. Although its action was, in the main, languid and sentimental, there was a side of the Astree which encouraged that extravagant love of glory, that spirit of "panache", which was now rising to its height in France. That spirit it was which animated [[Marin le Roy de Gomberville]] (1603–1674), who was the inventor of what have since been known as the Heroical Romances. In these there was experienced a violent recrudescence of the old medieval elements of romance, the impossible valour devoted to a pursuit of the impossible beauty, but the whole clothed in the language and feeling and atmosphere of the age in which the books were written. In order to give point to the [[chivalrous]] actions of the heroes, it was always hinted that they were well-known public characters of the day in a romantic disguise.

===Satirical romances===
[[File:Richard Head 1666.png|left|thumb|[[Richard Head]], ''The English Rogue'' (1665)]]
Stories of witty cheats were an integral part of the European novella with its tradition of [[fabliaux]]. Significant examples include ''[[Till Eulenspiegel]]'' (1510), ''[[Lazarillo de Tormes]]'' (1554), [[Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen|Grimmelshausen]]'s ''[[Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus|Simplicissimus Teutsch]]'' (1666–1668) and in England [[Richard Head]]'s ''The English Rogue'' (1665). The tradition that developed with these titles focused on a hero and his life. The adventures led to satirical encounters with the real world with the hero either becoming the pitiable victim or the rogue who exploited the vices of those he met.

A second tradition of satirical romances can be traced back to [[Heinrich Wittenwiler]]'s ''Ring'' ({{Circa|1410}}) and to [[François Rabelais]]' ''[[Gargantua and Pantagruel]]'' (1532–1564), which parodied and satirized heroic romances, and did this mostly by dragging them into the low realm of the burlesque. ''Don Quixote'' modified the satire of romances: its hero lost contact with reality by reading too many romances in the Amadisian tradition.

Other important works of the tradition are [[Paul Scarron]]'s ''Roman Comique'' (1651–57), the anonymous French ''Rozelli'' with its satire on Europe's religions, [[Alain-René Lesage]]'s ''[[Gil Blas]]'' (1715–1735), [[Henry Fielding]]'s ''[[Joseph Andrews]]'' (1742) and ''[[The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Tom Jones]]'' (1749), and [[Denis Diderot]]'s ''[[Jacques the Fatalist]]'' (1773, printed posthumously in 1796).<ref>Compare also: Günter Berger, ''Der komisch-satirische Roman und seine Leser. Poetik, Funktion und Rezeption einer niederen Gattung im Frankreich des 17. Jahrhunderts'' (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1984), Ellen Turner Gutiérrez ''The reception of the picaresque in the French, English, and German traditions'' (P. Lang, 1995), and Frank Palmeri, ''Satire, History, Novel: Narrative Forms, 1665–1815'' (University of Delaware Press, 2003).</ref>

===Histories===
[[File:1719-heathcot-robinson-crusoe.png|thumb|1719 newspaper reprint of ''Robinson Crusoe'']]
A market of literature in the modern sense of the word, that is a separate market for fiction and poetry, did not exist until the late seventeenth century. All books were sold under the rubric of "History and politicks" in the early 18th century, including [[pamphlet]]s, [[memoir]]s, [[travel literature]], political analysis, serious histories, romances, poetry, and novels.

That fictional histories shared the same space with academic histories and modern journalism had been criticized by historians since the end of the Middle Ages: fictions were "lies" and therefore hardly justifiable at all. The climate, however, changed in the 1670s.

The romance format of the quasi–historical works of [[Madame d'Aulnoy]], [[César Vichard de Saint-Réal]],<ref>See his ''Dom Carlos, nouvelle histoire'' (Amsterdam, 1672) and the recent dissertation by Chantal Carasco, ''Saint-Réal, romancier de l'histoire: une cohérence esthéthique et morale'' (Nantes, 2005).</ref> [[Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras]],<ref>Jean Lombard, ''Courtilz de Sandras et la crise du roman à la fin du Grand Siècle'' (Paris: PUF, 1980).</ref> and [[Anne-Marguerite Petit du Noyer]], allowed the publication of histories that dared not risk an unambiguous assertion of their truth. The literary market-place of the late 17th and early 18th century employed a simple pattern of options whereby fictions could reach out into the sphere of true histories. This permitted its authors to claim they had published fiction, not truth, if they ever faced allegations of libel.

Prefaces and title pages of seventeenth and early eighteenth century fiction acknowledged this pattern: histories could claim to be romances, but threaten to relate true events, as in the ''[[Roman à clef]]''. Other works could, conversely, claim to be factual histories, yet earn the suspicion that they were wholly invented. A further differentiation was made between private and public history: [[Daniel Defoe]]'s ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' was, within this pattern, neither a "romance" nor a "novel". It smelled of romance, yet the preface stated that it should most certainly be read as a true private history.<ref>[[Daniel Defoe]], [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1719-robinson-crusoe/p-iii.html ''Robinson Crusoe''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070314083855/http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1719-robinson-crusoe/p-iii.html |date=2007-03-14 }} (London: [[William Taylor (bookseller)|William Taylor]], 1719)</ref>

===Cervantes and the modern European novel===
{{See also|Picaresque novel}}

The rise of the modern European novel, as an alternative to the [[chivalric romance]], is often said to have begun either with ''[[Gargantua and Pantagruel#Pantagrue|Pantagruell]]'' in 1532 or with ''[[Don Quixote]]'' in 1605.<ref name="Merriam-Webster 1995" /> Another important early novel was the French pastoral novel ''[[L'Astrée]]'' by [[Honore d'Urfe]], published in 1610. 

with the publication of [[Miguel de Cervantes]]' novel ''[[Don Quixote]]'':<ref name=bloom>{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/13/classics.miguelcervantes|title=The knight in the mirror|author=Bloom, Harold|website=[[The Guardian]]|date=13 December 2003|access-date=5 July 2019|archive-date=4 October 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081004163826/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/dec/13/classics.miguelcervantes|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-don-quixote-the-worlds-first-modern-novel-and-one-of-the-best-94097#:~:text=BY%2DNC%2DSA-,Guide%20to%20the%20classics%3A%20Don%20Quixote%2C%20the%20world's%20first%20modern,and%20one%20of%20the%20best|title=Guide to the classics: Don Quixote, the world's first modern novel – and one of the best|last1=Puchau de Lecea|first1=Ana|first2=Vicente|last2=Pérez de León|website=[[The Conversation (website)|The Conversation]]|date=25 June 2018|access-date=1 July 2020|archive-date=15 August 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180815124846/https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-don-quixote-the-worlds-first-modern-novel-and-one-of-the-best-94097#:~:text=BY%2DNC%2DSA-,Guide%20to%20the%20classics%3A%20Don%20Quixote%2C%20the%20world's%20first%20modern,and%20one%20of%20the%20best|url-status=live}}</ref> "the first great novel of world literature".<ref name=bbcdon>{{cite news | title=Don Quixote gets authors' votes | url=https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1972609.stm | publisher=BBC News | date=7 May 2002 | access-date=3 January 2010 | archive-date=21 August 2010 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100821100400/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1972609.stm | url-status=live }}</ref> It continued with [[Paul Scarron|Scarron]]'s ''Roman Comique'' (the first part of which appeared in 1651), whose heroes noted the rivalry between French romances and the new Spanish genre.<ref>See Paul Scarron, ''The Comical Romance'', Chapter XXI. "Which perhaps will not be found very Entertaining" (London, 1700) with its call for the new genre. [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/library/e-1700-0002.html#c21 online edition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051125051650/http://www.pierre-marteau.com/library/e-1700-0002.html#c21 |date=2005-11-25 }}</ref>
In Germany an early example of the novel is ''[[Simplicius Simplicissimus]]'' by [[Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen]], published in 1668,

Late 17th-century critics looked back on the history of prose fiction, proud of the generic shift that had taken place, leading towards the modern novel/novella.<ref>See [Du Sieur,] "Sentimens sur l'histoire" in: ''Sentimens sur les lettres et sur l'histoire, avec des scruples sur le stile'' (Paris: C. Blageart, 1680) [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1683-1712-novels.html online edition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060323063143/http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1683-1712-novels.html |date=2006-03-23 }} and Camille Esmein's ''Poétiques du roman. Scudéry, Huet, Du Plaisir et autres textes théoriques et critiques du XVIIe siècle sur le genre romanesque'' (Paris, 2004).</ref> The first perfect works in French were those of Scarron and [[Madame de La Fayette]]'s "Spanish history" ''Zayde'' (1670). The development finally led to her ''[[La Princesse de Clèves|Princesse de Clèves]]'' (1678), the first novel with what would become characteristic French subject matter.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.espacefrancais.com/mme-de-la-fayette-la-princesse-de-cleves/ |title=Mme de La Fayette : La Princesse de Clèves (1678) |website=EspaceFrancais.com |date=2 October 2018 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209203910/https://www.espacefrancais.com/mme-de-la-fayette-la-princesse-de-cleves/ |archive-date= Dec 9, 2023 }}</ref><ref>[https://www.espacefrancais.com/mme-de-la-fayette-la-princesse-de-cleves/ "The Princess Of Cleves"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231209203910/https://www.espacefrancais.com/mme-de-la-fayette-la-princesse-de-cleves/ |date=2023-12-09 }},"www.espacefrancais.com",</ref>

Europe witnessed the generic shift in the titles of works in French published in Holland, which supplied the international market and English publishers exploited the novel/romance controversy in the 1670s and 1680s.<ref>See [[Robert Letellier|Robert Ignatius Letellier]], ''The English novel, 1660–1700: an annotated bibliography'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997).</ref> Contemporary critics listed the advantages of the new genre: brevity, a lack of ambition to produce epic poetry in prose; the style was fresh and plain; the focus was on modern life, and on heroes who were neither good nor bad.<ref>See the preface to ''The Secret History of Queen Zarah'' (Albigion, 1705)– the English version of Abbe Bellegarde, "Lettre à une Dame de la Cour, qui lui avoit demandé quelques Reflexions sur l'Histoire" in: ''Lettres curieuses de littérature et de morale'' (La Haye: Adrian Moetjens, 1702) [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1683-1712-novels.html online edition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060323063143/http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1683-1712-novels.html |date=2006-03-23 }}</ref> The novel's potential to become the medium of urban gossip and scandal fueled the rise of the novel/novella. Stories were offered as allegedly true recent histories, not for the sake of scandal but strictly for the moral lessons they gave. To prove this, fictionalized names were used with the true names in a separate key. The ''[[Mercure Gallant]]'' set the fashion in the 1670s.<ref>DeJean, Joan. ''The Essence of Style: How the French Invented Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour'' (New York: Free Press, 2005).</ref> Collections of letters and memoirs appeared, and were filled with the intriguing new subject matter and the [[epistolary novel]] grew from this and led to the first full blown example of scandalous fiction in [[Aphra Behn]]'s ''[[Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister]]'' (1684/ 1685/ 1687). Before the rise of the literary novel, reading novels had only been a form of entertainment.<ref>Warner, William B. [http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft2g5004r2;chunk.id=0;doc.view=print ''Preface From a Literary to a Cultural History of the Early Novel''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141205120909/http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft2g5004r2;chunk.id=0;doc.view=print |date=2014-12-05 }} In: Licensing Entertainment – The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684–1750 University of California Press, Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford: 1998.</ref>

However, one of the earliest English novels, [[Daniel Defoe]]'s ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' (1719), has elements of the romance, unlike these novels, because of its exotic setting and story of survival in isolation. ''Crusoe'' lacks almost all of the elements found in these new novels: wit, a fast narration evolving around a group of young fashionable urban heroes, along with their intrigues, a scandalous moral, gallant talk to be imitated, and a brief, concise plot.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} The new developments did, however, lead to [[Eliza Haywood]]'s epic length novel, ''Love in Excess'' (1719/20) and to [[Samuel Richardson]]'s ''[[Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded]]'' (1741).{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} Some literary historians date the beginning of the English novel with Richardson's ''Pamela'', rather than ''Crusoe.''<ref name="asj.upd.edu.ph">Cevasco, George A.  [http://www.asj.upd.edu.ph/mediabox/archive/ASJ-05-03-1967/cevasco-pearl%20buck-chinese-novel.pdf ''Pearl Buck and the Chinese Novel''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141219115118/http://www.asj.upd.edu.ph/mediabox/archive/ASJ-05-03-1967/cevasco-pearl%20buck-chinese-novel.pdf |date=2014-12-19 }}, p.&nbsp;442.  Asian Studies – Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 1967, 5:3, pp.&nbsp;437–51.</ref>

==18th-century novels==
{{main|Augustan prose}}

The idea of the "rise of the novel" in the 18th century is especially associated with [[Ian Watt]]'s influential study ''The Rise of the Novel'' (1957).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Orr |first=Leah |title=Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, 1690-1730 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |year=2017 |isbn=9780813940137 |pages=11 |chapter=Defining the 'Novel'}}</ref> In Watt's conception, a rise in fictional realism during the 18th century came to distinguish the novel from earlier prose narratives.<ref>''The Rise of the Novel'' (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963), p.&nbsp;10.</ref>

===Printing and novel formats===
Many early eighteenth-century English novels were printed in small [[book size|formats]], such as octavo, which were not traditionally the formats designated for prestigious or important books. The octavo or duodecimo size made early novels similar in appearance to other kinds of printed prose narratives including travel narratives, sermons, and spiritual autobiographies.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Jordan Alexander Stein |title=When Novels Were Books |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2020 |isbn=9780674987043 |pages=3}}</ref> Like these other kinds of books, they were often printed with small type and with narrow margins, format features that suggest novels were designed to be read continuously, from cover to cover, rather than, for example, Christian religious books which accommodated opening at random and expounding on single verses or passages.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Stallybrass |first=Peter |title=Books and Readers in Early Modern England |editor= Jennifer Anderson and Elizabeth Sauer |publisher= University of Pennsylvania Press |year=2002 |isbn= 9780812217940 |pages=336–363 |chapter=Book and Scrolls: Navigating the Bible}}</ref>

Many early novels were also printed anonymously or passed off as true stories written by their main characters. Only toward the second half of the eighteenth century did novels come to be generally recognized as fictional <ref>{{Cite book |last=Gallagher |first=Catherine |title=The Novel, vol. 1: History, Geography, and Culture |editor= Franco Moretti |publisher= Princeton University Press |year=2006 |isbn=9780691127187 |pages=336–363 |chapter=The Rise of Fictionality}}</ref>, and the marketing of novels as novels, with that word on the title page, came only in the 1790s and after.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Jordan Alexander Stein |title=When Novels Were Books |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2020 |isbn=9780674987043 |pages=150–152}}</ref> Because there was therefore no clear generic distinction between fiction and nonfiction, the conditions of printing, including size format, can be used as way of understanding how the genre emerged.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Jordan Alexander Stein |title=When Novels Were Books |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2020 |isbn=9780674987043}}</ref>

Another defining feature in the printing of early novels is the number of print runs and the speed at which they sold out. Many popular seventeenth-century books were what scholars have designated as [[steady sellers]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hall |first=David D. |title=Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England|publisher= Harvard University Press |year=1989 |pages=48–52}}</ref> These were regularly reprinted editions of devotional or religious literature that sold perennially for decades, though individual print runs during the seventeenth century were often under 1000 copies.<ref>{{Cite book |author=C. John Sommerville |title=Popular Religion in Restoration England|publisher= University Presses of Florida |year=1977 |pages=48–52}}</ref> By contrast, early English novels traded the reliable returns of the steady seller for short-term, high-volume sales.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Winans |first=Robert B. |title=Printing and Society in Early America|editor= William L. Joyce, David D. Hall, Richard D. Brown, and John B. Hench |publisher= [[American Antiquarian Society]] |year=1983 |pages=175 |chapter=Bibliography and the Cultural Historian: Notes on the Eighteenth-Century Novel}}</ref>

===Philosophical novel===
{{main|Philosophical fiction}}

[[File:1769 Laurence Sterne Tristram Shandy v6 p70.jpg|thumb|[[Laurence Sterne]], ''[[Tristram Shandy]]'', vol.6, pp.&nbsp;70–71 (1769)]]
The rising status of the novel in eighteenth century can be seen in the development of philosophical<ref>See [[Jonathan Israel|Jonathan Irvine Israel]], ''Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750'' ([[Oxford University Press]], 2002), pp.&nbsp;591–599, Roger Pearson, ''The fables of reason: a study of Voltaire's "Contes philosophiques"'' (Oxford University Press 1993), Dena Goodman, ''Criticism in action: Enlightenment experiments in political writing'' ([[Cornell University Press]] 1989), Robert Francis O'Reilly, ''The Artistry of Montesquieu's Narrative Tales'' (University of Wisconsin., 1967), and René Pomeau and Jean Ehrard, ''De Fénelon à Voltaire'' (Flammarion, 1998).</ref> and [[experimental novel]]s.

Philosophical fiction was not exactly new. [[Plato]]'s dialogues were embedded in fictional narratives and his ''[[Republic (Plato)|Republic]]'' is an early example of a [[Utopia]]. [[Ibn Tufail]]'s 12th century ''[[Hayy ibn Yaqdhan|Philosophus Autodidacticus]]'' with its story of a human outcast surviving on an island, and the 13th century response by [[Ibn al-Nafis]], ''[[Theologus Autodidactus]]'' are both didactic narrative works that can be thought of as early examples of a philosophical<ref name=Attar>[[Samar Attar]], ''The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl's Influence on Modern Western Thought'', Lexington Books, {{ISBN missing}}.</ref> and a theological novel,<ref name=Meyerhof>[[Muhsin Mahdi]] (1974), "''The Theologus Autodidactus of Ibn at-Nafis'' by Max Meyerhof, Joseph Schacht",</ref> respectively.

The tradition of works of fiction that were also philosophical texts continued with [[Thomas More]]'s ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]'' (1516) and [[Tommaso Campanella]]'s ''[[The City of the Sun|City of the Sun]]'' (1602). However, the actual tradition of the [[philosophical novel]] came into being in the 1740s with new editions of More's work under the title ''Utopia: or the happy republic; a philosophical romance'' (1743).{{citation needed|date=August 2015}} [[Voltaire]] wrote in this genre in ''[[Micromégas|Micromegas: a comic romance, which is a biting satire on philosophy, ignorance, and the self-conceit of mankind]]'' (1752, English 1753). His ''[[Zadig]]'' (1747) and ''[[Candide]]'' (1759) became central texts of the French [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] and of the modern novel.{{citation needed|date=April 2018}}

An example of the [[experimental novel]] is [[Laurence Sterne]]'s ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman]]'' (1759–1767), with its rejection of continuous narration.<ref>Encyclopaedia Britannica [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tristram-Shandy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180411030623/https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tristram-Shandy |date=2018-04-11 }}.</ref> In it the author not only addresses readers in his preface but speaks directly to them in his fictional narrative. In addition to Sterne's narrative experiments, there are visual experiments, such as a marbled page, a black page to express sorrow, and a page of lines to show the plot lines of the book. The novel as a whole focuses on the problems of language, with constant regard to [[John Locke]]'s theories in ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]''.<ref name=griffin>{{cite journal |last=Griffin |first=Robert J. |year=1961 |title=Tristram Shandy and Language |journal=College English |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=108–12|jstor=372959 |doi=10.2307/372959}}</ref>

===The romance genre in the 18th century===
[[File:Richardson pamela 1741.jpg|left|thumb|[[Samuel Richardson]]'s ''[[Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded|Pamela]]'' (1741)]]

The rise of the word "novel" at the cost of its rival, the romance, remained a Spanish and English phenomenon, and though readers all over Western Europe had welcomed the novel(la) or short history as an alternative in the second half of the 17th century, only the English and the Spanish had openly discredited the romance.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}

But the change of taste was brief and [[François Fénelon|Fénelon's]] ''Telemachus'' [''[[Les Aventures de Télémaque]]''] (1699/1700) already exploited a nostalgia for the old romances with their heroism and professed virtue. [[Jane Barker]] explicitly advertised her ''Exilius'' as "A new Romance", "written after the Manner of Telemachus", in 1715.<ref name=":0" /> [[Robinson Crusoe]] spoke of his own story as a "romance", though in the preface to the third volume, published in 1720, Defoe attacks all who said "that [...] the Story is feign'd, that the Names are borrow'd, and that it is all a Romance; that there never were any such Man or Place".

The late 18th century brought an answer with the [[romanticism|Romantic]] Movement's readiness to reclaim the word romance, with the [[gothic romance]], and the [[historical novel]]s of [[Walter Scott]]. ''Robinson Crusoe'' now became a "novel" in this period, that is a work of the new realistic fiction created in the 18th century.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}

===The sentimental novel===
{{main|Sentimental novel}}
Sentimental novels relied on emotional responses, and feature scenes of distress and tenderness, and the plot is arranged to advance emotions rather than action. The result is a valorization of "fine feeling", displaying the characters as models of refined, sensitive emotional affect. The ability to display such feelings was thought at this time to show character and experience, and to help shape positive social life and relationships.<ref>Richard Maxwell and Katie Trumpener, eds., ''The Cambridge Companion to Fiction in the Romantic Period'' (2008).</ref>

An example of this genre is [[Samuel Richardson]]'s ''[[Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded]]'' (1740), composed "to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes", which focuses on a potential victim, a heroine that has all the modern virtues and who is vulnerable because her low social status and her occupation as servant of a libertine who falls in love with her. She, however, ends in reforming her antagonist.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}

Male heroes adopted the new [[sentimental novel|sentimental]] character traits in the 1760s. [[Laurence Sterne]]'s [[Yorick]], the hero of the ''[[A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy|Sentimental Journey]]'' (1768) did so with an enormous amount of humour. [[Oliver Goldsmith]]'s ''[[The Vicar of Wakefield|Vicar of Wakefield]]'' (1766) and [[Henry Mackenzie]]'s ''Man of Feeling'' (1771) produced the far more serious role models.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}

These works inspired a [[Subculture|sub]]- and [[counterculture]] of [[pornography|pornographic]] novels, for which Greek and Latin authors in translations had provided elegant models from the last century.<ref>The elegant and clearly fashionable edition of ''The Works of [[Lucian]]'' (London: S. Briscoe/ J. Woodward/ J. Morphew, 1711), would thus include the story of "Lucian's Ass", vol.1 pp.&nbsp;114–43.</ref> Pornography includes [[John Cleland]]'s ''[[Fanny Hill]]'' (1748), which offered an almost exact reversal of the plot of novels that emphasise virtue. The prostitute Fanny Hill learns to enjoy her work and establishes herself as a free and economically independent individual, in editions one could only expect to buy under the counter.<ref>See Robert Darnton, ''The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France'' (New York: Norton, 1995), Lynn Hunt, ''The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500–1800'' (New York: Zone, 1996), Inger Leemans, ''Het woord is aan de onderkant: radicale ideeën in Nederlandse pornografische romans 1670–1700'' (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2002), and Lisa Z. Sigel, ''Governing Pleasures: Pornography and Social Change in England, 1815–1914'' (January: Scholarly Book Services Inc, 2002).</ref>

Less virtuous protagonists can also be found in satirical novels, like [[Richard Head]]'s ''English Rogue'' (1665), that feature brothels, while women authors like [[Aphra Behn]] had offered their heroines alternative careers as precursors of the 19th-century [[femme fatale|femmes fatales]].<ref>[[Aphra Behn]]'s ''[[Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister]]'' (1684/ 1685/ 1687)</ref>

The genre evolves in the 1770s with, for example, Werther in [[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]]'s ''[[The Sorrows of Young Werther]]'' (1774) realising that it is impossible for him to integrate into the new conformist society, and [[Pierre Choderlos de Laclos]] in ''[[Les Liaisons dangereuses]]'' (1782) showing a group of aristocrats playing games of intrigue and amorality.{{citation needed|date=August 2015}}.

===The social context of the 18th-century novel===

====Changing cultural status====
By around 1700, fiction was no longer a predominantly aristocratic entertainment, and printed books had soon gained the power to reach readers of almost all classes, though the reading habits differed and to follow fashions remained a privilege. Spain was a trendsetter into the 1630s but French authors superseded [[Miguel de Cervantes|Cervantes]], [[Francisco de Quevedo|de Quevedo]], and [[Mateo Alemán|Alemán]] in the 1640s. As [[Pierre Daniel Huet|Huet]] was to note in 1670, the change was one of manners.<ref>Pierre Daniel Huet, ''The History of Romances'', transl. by Stephen Lewis (London: J. Hooke/ T. Caldecott, 1715), pp.&nbsp;138–140.</ref> The new French works taught a new, on the surface freer, gallant exchange between the sexes as the essence of life at the French court.

The situation changed again from 1660s into the 1690s when works by French authors were published in Holland out of the reach of French censors.<ref>See for the following: Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, H. Bots, P.G. Hoftijzer (eds.), ''Le Magasin de L'univers: The Dutch Republic as the Centre of the European Book Trade: Papers Presented at the International Colloquium, Held at Wassenaar, 5–7 July 1990'' (Leiden/ Boston, MA: Brill, 1992).</ref> Dutch publishing houses pirated fashionable books from France and created a new market of political and scandalous fiction. This led to a market of European rather than French fashions in the early 18th century.<ref>See also the article on [[Pierre Marteau]] for a profile of the European production of (not only) political scandal.</ref>
[[File:1711 The Court and City Vagaries.jpg|upright=0.7|thumb|right|Intimate short stories: ''The Court and City Vagaries'' (1711).]]

By the 1680s fashionable political European novels had inspired a second wave of private scandalous publications and generated new productions of local importance. Women authors reported on politics and on their private love affairs in The Hague and in London. German students imitated them to boast of their private amours in fiction.<ref>See ''George Ernst Reinwalds Academien- und Studenten-Spiegel'' (Berlin: J.A. Rüdiger, 1720), pp.&nbsp;424–427 and the novels written by such "authors" as Celander, Sarcander, and Adamantes at the beginning of the 18th century.</ref> The London, the anonymous international market of the Netherlands, publishers in Hamburg and Leipzig generated new public spheres.<ref>Jürgen Habermas, ''The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of the Bourgeois Society'' [1962], translated by Thomas Burger (MIT Press, 1991).</ref> Once private individuals, such as students in university towns and daughters of London's upper class began to write novels based on questionable reputations, the public began to call for a reformation of manners.<ref name=":0">See the ''Entertainments'' pp.&nbsp;74–77, Jane Barker's preface to her [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1715-exilius.html ''Exilius''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070314084110/http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1715-exilius.html |date=2007-03-14 }} (London: E. Curll, 1715), and ''George Ernst Reinwalds Academien- und Studenten-Spiegel'' (Berlin: J.A. Rüdiger, 1720), pp.&nbsp;424–27.</ref>

An important development in Britain, at the beginning of the century, was that new journals like ''[[The Spectator (1711)|The Spectator]]'' and ''[[Tatler (1709)|The Tatler]]'' reviewed novels. In Germany [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing]]'s ''Briefe, die neuste Literatur betreffend'' (1758) appeared in the middle of the century with reviews of art and fiction. By the 1780s such reviews played had an important role in introducing new works of fiction to the public.

Influenced by the new journals, reform became the main goal of the second generation of eighteenth century novelists. ''The Spectator'' Number 10 had stated that the aim was now "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality […] to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses"). Constructive criticism of novels had until then been rare.<ref>See Hugh Barr Nisbet, Claude Rawson (eds.), ''The Cambridge history of literary criticism'', vol. IV (Cambridge University Press 1997); and Ernst Weber, ''Texte zur Romantheorie: (1626–1781)'', 2 vols. (München: Fink, 1974/ 1981) and the individual volumes of Dennis Poupard (et al.), ''Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800: '' (Detroit, Mich.: Gale Research Co, 1984 ff.).</ref> The first treatise on the history of the novel was a preface to Marie de La Fayette's novel ''Zayde'' (1670).

A much later development was the introduction of novels into school and later university curricula.{{when|date=July 2018}}

====The acceptance of novels as literature====

The French churchman and scholar [[Pierre Daniel Huet]]'s ''[[Traitté de l'origine des romans]]'' (1670) laid the ground for a greater acceptance of the novel as literature, that is comparable to the [[classics]], in the early 18th century. The theologian had not only dared to praise fictions, but he had also explained techniques of theological interpretation of fiction, which was a novelty. Furthermore, readers of novels and romances could gain insight not only into their own culture, but also that of distant, exotic countries.{{citation needed|date=April 2018}}

When the decades around 1700 saw the appearance of new editions of the classical authors [[Petronius]], [[Lucian]], and [[Heliodorus of Emesa]].<ref>''The Works of T. Petronius Arbiter'' [...] ''second edition'' [...] (London: S. Briscoe/ J. Woodward/ J. Morphew, 1710); ''The Works of Lucian'',, 2 vols. (London: S. Briscoe/ J. Woodward/ J. Morphew, 1711). See ''The Adventures of Theagenes and Chariclia [...]'', 2 vols. (London: W. Taylor/ E. Curll/ R. Gosling/ J. Hooke/ J. Browne/ J. Osborn, 1717),</ref> the publishers equipped them with prefaces that referred to Huet's treatise and the [[Western canon|canon]] it had established. Also exotic works of Middle Eastern fiction entered the market that gave insight into Islamic culture. ''[[The Book of One Thousand and One Nights]]'' was first published in Europe from 1704 to 1715 in French, and then translated immediately into English and German, and was seen as a contribution to Huet's history of romances.<ref>August Bohse's (alias Talander) "Preface" to the German edition. (Leipzig: J.L. Gleditsch/ M.G. Weidmann, 1710).</ref>

The English, ''Select Collection of Novels in six volumes'' (1720–22), is a milestone in this development of the novel's prestige. It included Huet's ''Treatise'', along with the European tradition of the modern novel of the day: that is, novella from [[Niccolò Machiavelli|Machiavelli]]'s to [[Marie de La Fayette]]'s masterpieces. [[Aphra Behn]]'s novels had appeared in the 1680s but became classics when reprinted in collections. [[François Fénelon|Fénelon]]'s ''Telemachus'' (1699/1700) became a classic three years after its publication. New authors entering the market were now ready to use their personal names rather than pseudonyms, including [[Eliza Haywood]], who in 1719 following in the footsteps of Aphra Behn used her name with unprecedented pride.

==19th-century novels==

===Romanticism===
{{main|Romanticism}}
{{See also|Newgate novel}}
[[File:Walter Scott Waverley illustration (Pettie-Huth).jpg|upright=0.8|thumb|Image from a Victorian edition of [[Walter Scott]]'s ''[[Waverley (novel)|Waverley]]'' (1814)]]
The very word [[romanticism]] is connected to the idea of romance, and the romance genre experienced a revival, at the end of the 18th century, with [[gothic fiction]], that began in 1764 with [[Horace Walpole]]'s ''[[The Castle of Otranto]]'', subtitled (in its second edition) "A Gothic Story".<ref>{{cite news |title=The Castle of Otranto: The creepy tale that launched gothic fiction |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30313775 |publisher=BBC |date=13 December 2014 |access-date=17 August 2017 |archive-date=3 July 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190703063419/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30313775 |url-status=live }}</ref> Subsequent important gothic works are [[Ann Radcliffe]]'s ''[[The Mysteries of Udolpho]]'' (1794) and [[Matthew Gregory Lewis|'Monk' Lewis]]'s ''[[The Monk]]'' (1796).

[[File:Seitseman veljekset.jpg|upright=0.8|thumb|First edition of [[Aleksis Kivi]]'s ''[[The Seven Brothers]]'' (1870)]]
The new romances challenged the idea that the novel involved a [[realism (arts)|realistic]] depiction of life, and destabilized the difference the critics had been trying to establish, between serious classical art and popular fiction. Gothic romances exploited the [[grotesque]],<ref>See Geoffrey Galt Harpham,'' On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature'', 2nd ed. (Davies Group, Publishers, 2006).</ref> and some critics thought that their subject matter deserved less credit than the worst medieval tales of [[Arthurian romance|Arthurian knighthood]].<ref>See Gerald Ernest Paul Gillespie, Manfred Engel, and Bernard Dieterle, ''Romantic prose fiction'' (John Benjamin's Publishing Company, 2008).</ref>

The authors of this new type of fiction were accused of exploiting all available topics to thrill, arouse, or horrify their audience. These new [[romanticism|romantic]] novelists, however, claimed that they were exploring the entire realm of fictionality. And psychological interpreters, in the early 19th century, read these works as encounters with the deeper hidden truth of the human imagination: this included sexuality, [[Angst|anxieties]], and insatiable [[desire (emotion)|desires]]. Under such readings, novels were described as exploring deeper human motives, and it was suggested that such artistic freedom would reveal what had not previously been openly visible.

The romances of [[Marquis de Sade|de Sade]], ''[[The 120 Days of Sodom|Les 120 Journées de Sodome]]'' (1785), [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]]'s ''[[Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque]]'' (1840), [[Mary Shelley]], ''[[Frankenstein]]'' (1818), and [[E.T.A. Hoffmann]], ''[[Die Elixiere des Teufels]]'' (1815), would later attract 20th-century psychoanalysts and supply the images for 20th- and 21st-century horror films, [[romance novel|love romances]], [[fantasy]] novels, [[Role-playing game|role-playing]] computer games, and the [[surrealism|surrealists]].

The [[historical romance]] was also important at this time. But, while earlier writers of these romances paid little attention to historical reality, [[Walter Scott]]'s [[historical novel]] ''[[Waverley (novel)|Waverley]]'' (1814) broke with this tradition, and he invented "the true historical novel". At the same time he was influenced by [[gothic romance]], and had collaborated in 1801 with [[Matthew Lewis (writer)|'Monk' Lewis]] on ''Tales of Wonder''.<ref name="The Bloomsbury Guide p. 885">''The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature'', ed. Marion Wynne Davis. New York: Prentice Hall, 1990, p.&nbsp;885.</ref> With his [[Waverley novels]] Scott "hoped to do for the Scottish border" what [[Goethe]] and other German poets "had done for the [[Middle Ages]], "and make its past live again in modern romance".<ref>''The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature'', ed. Marion Wynne Davis, p.&nbsp;884.</ref> Scott's novels "are in the mode he himself defined as romance, 'the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents{{'"}}.<ref name=norton>''The Norton Anthology of English Literature'', vol.2, 7th edition, ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 2000, pp.&nbsp;20–21.</ref> He used his imagination to re-evaluate history by rendering things, incidents and protagonists in the way only the novelist could do. His work remained historical fiction, yet it questioned existing historical perceptions. The use of historical research was an important tool: Scott, the novelist, resorted to documentary sources as any historian would have done, but as a romantic he gave his subject a deeper imaginative and emotional significance.<ref name=norton/> By combining research with "marvelous and uncommon incidents", Scott attracted a far wider market than any historian could, and was the most famous novelist of his generation, throughout Europe.<ref name="The Bloomsbury Guide p. 885" />

===The Victorian period: 1837–1901===
{{main|French literature of the 19th century|Victorian literature}}
{{See also|Sensation novel}}

In the 19th century, the relationship between authors, publishers, and readers changed. Authors originally had only received payment for their manuscript, however, changes in [[History of copyright law|copyright laws]], which began in the 18th and continued into the 19th century<ref>See Mark Rose, ''Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright'' 3rd ed. (Harvard University Press, 1993) and Joseph Lowenstein, ''The Author's Due: Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright'' (University of Chicago Press, 2002)</ref> promised royalties on all future editions. Another change in the 19th century was that novelists began to read their works in theaters, halls, and bookshops.<ref>See Susan Esmann, "Die Autorenlesung&nbsp;– eine Form der Literaturvermittlung", ''Kritische Ausgabe'' 1/2007 [http://kritische-ausgabe.de/hefte/werkstatt/esmann.pdf PDF; 0,8 MB] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090224215612/http://kritische-ausgabe.de/hefte/werkstatt/esmann.pdf |date=2009-02-24 }}.</ref> Also during the nineteenth century the market for [[popular fiction]] grew, and competed with works of literature. New institutions like the [[circulating library]] created a new market with a mass reading public.<ref>See Richard Altick and Jonathan Rose, ''The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900'', 2nd ed. (Ohio State University Press, 1998) and William St. Clair, ''The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period'' (Cambridge: CUP, 2004).</ref>

Another difference was that novels began to deal with more difficult subjects, including current political and social issues, that were being discussed in newspapers and magazines. Under the influence of social critics like [[Thomas Carlyle]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=Tillotson |first=Kathleen |title=Novels of the Eighteen-Forties |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1956 |location=London |pages=150–6 |quote=All serious novelists were affected by [the influence of Carlyle] in some degree, both in ways common to all and individually modified; and it is an influence not merely upon the content but upon the mode and temper of the novel. ... After Carlyle, the poetic, prophetic, and visionary possibilities of the novel are fully awakened. |author-link=Kathleen Tillotson}}</ref> the idea of social responsibility became a key subject, whether of the citizen, or of the artist, with the theoretical debate concentrating on questions around the moral soundness of the modern novel.<ref>See: James Engell, ''The committed word: Literature and Public Values'' (Penn State Press, 1999) and Edwin M. Eigner, George John Worth (ed.), ''Victorian criticism of the novel'' (Cambridge: CUP Archive, 1985).</ref> Questions about artistic integrity, as well as [[aestheticism|aesthetics]], including the idea of "[[art for art's sake]]", proposed by writers like [[Oscar Wilde]] and [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]], were also important.<ref>Gene H. Bell-Villada, ''Art for Art's Sake & Literary Life: How Politics and Markets Helped Shape the Ideology & Culture of Aestheticism, 1790–1990'' (University of Nebraska Press, 1996).</ref>

Major British writers such as [[Charles Dickens]]<ref>Arthur C. Benson, "Charles Dickens". ''The North American Review'', Vol. 195, No. 676 (Mar., 1912), pp.&nbsp;381–91.</ref> and [[Thomas Hardy]]<ref>Jane Millgate, "Two Versions of Regional Romance: Scott's ''The Bride of Lammermoor'' and Hardy's ''Tess of the d'Urbervilles''. ''Studies in English Literature'', 1500–1900, Vol. 17, No. 4, Nineteenth Century (Autumn, 1977), pp.&nbsp;729–38.</ref> were influenced by the romance genre tradition of the novel, which had been revitalized during the Romantic period. The [[Brontë sisters]] were notable mid-19th-century authors in this tradition, with [[Anne Brontë]]'s ''[[The Tenant of Wildfell Hall]]'', [[Charlotte Brontë]]'s ''[[Jane Eyre]]'' and [[Emily Brontë]]'s ''[[Wuthering Heights]]''.<ref>Lucasta Miller, ''The Brontë Myth''. London: Vintage, 2002.</ref> Publishing at the very end of the 19th century, [[Joseph Conrad]] has been called "a supreme 'romancer.{{'"}}<ref>''Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory'', ed. J.A. Cuddon, 4th ed., revised C.E. Preston (1999), p.&nbsp;761.</ref> In America "the romance ... proved to be a serious, flexible, and successful medium for the exploration of philosophical ideas and attitudes." Notable examples include [[Nathaniel Hawthorne]]'s ''[[The Scarlet Letter]]'', and [[Herman Melville]]'s ''[[Moby-Dick]]''.<ref name="Literary Terms 1995 p.450">''A Handbook of Literary Terms'', 7th edition, ed. Harmon and Holman (1995), p.&nbsp;450.</ref>

A number of European novelists were similarly influenced during this period by the earlier romance tradition, along with the [[Romanticism]], including [[Victor Hugo]], with novels like ''[[The Hunchback of Notre-Dame]]'' (1831) and ''[[Les Misérables]]'' (1862), and [[Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov]] with ''[[A Hero of Our Time]]'' (1840).

[[File:UncleTomsCabinCover.jpg|upright=0.7|thumb|[[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]'s ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' (1852)]]

Many 19th-century authors dealt with significant social matters.<ref>For the wider context of 19th-century encounters with history see: [[Hayden White]], ''[[Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe]]'' (Baltimore: [[Johns Hopkins University]], 1977).</ref> [[Émile Zola]]'s novels depicted the world of the [[working class]]es, which [[Karl Marx|Marx]] and [[Friedrich Engels|Engels]]'s non-fiction explores. In the United States slavery and racism became topics of far broader public debate thanks to [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]'s ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' (1852), which dramatizes topics that had previously been discussed mainly in the abstract. [[Charles Dickens]]' novels led his readers into contemporary [[workhouses]], and provided first-hand accounts of [[child labor]]. The treatment of the subject of war changed with [[Leo Tolstoy]]'s ''[[War and Peace]]'' (1868/69), where he questions the facts provided by historians. Similarly the treatment of crime is very different in [[Fyodor Dostoyevsky]]'s ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'' (1866), where the point of view is that of a criminal. Women authors had dominated fiction from the 1640s into the early 18th century, but few before [[George Eliot]] so openly questioned the role, education, and status of women in society, as she did.

As the novel became a platform of modern debate, [[nationalist|national literatures]] were developed that link the present with the past in the form of the [[historical novel]]. [[Alessandro Manzoni]]'s ''[[The Betrothed]]'' (1827) did this for Italy, while novelists in Russia and the surrounding Slavonic countries, as well as [[Scandinavia]], did likewise.

Along with this new appreciation of history, the future also became a topic for fiction. This had been done earlier in works like [[Samuel Madden (author)|Samuel Madden]]'s ''[[Memoirs of the Twentieth Century]]'' (1733) and [[Mary Shelley]]'s ''[[The Last Man (Mary Shelley novel)|The Last Man]]'' (1826), a work whose plot culminated in the catastrophic last days of a mankind extinguished by the plague. [[Edward Bellamy]]'s ''[[Looking Backward]]'' (1887) and [[H. G. Wells]]'s ''[[The Time Machine]]'' (1895) were concerned with technological and biological developments. [[Industrialization]], [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]]'s [[theory of evolution]] and Marx's theory of [[social class|class]] divisions shaped these works and turned historical processes into a subject of wide debate. Bellamy's ''Looking Backward'' became the second best-selling book of the 19th century after Harriet Beecher Stowe's ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]''.<ref>See Scott Donaldson and Ann Massa ''American Literature: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries'' (David & Charles, 1978), p.&nbsp;205.</ref><ref>Claire Parfait, ''The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852–2002'' (Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007).</ref> Such works led to the development of a whole genre of popular [[science fiction]] as the 20th century approached.

==20th century==
{{See also|Modernism|Postmodernism|Antinovel|Nouveau roman}}

===Modernism and post-modernism===
[[File:Evstafiev-solzhenitsyn.jpg|thumb|[[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]], Vladivostok, 1995]]

[[James Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' (1922) had a major influence on modern novelists, in the way that it replaced the 18th- and 19th-century narrator with a text that attempted to record inner thoughts, or a "[[stream of consciousness (narrative mode)|stream of consciousness]]". This term was first used by [[William James]] in 1890 and, along with the related term [[interior monologue]], is used by [[modernists]] like [[Dorothy Richardson]], [[Marcel Proust]], [[Virginia Woolf]], and [[William Faulkner]].<ref>See Erwin R. Steinberg (ed.) ''The Stream-of-consciousness technique in the modern novel'' (Port Washington, N.Y: Kennikat Press, 1979). On the extra-European usage of the technique see also: Elly Hagenaar/ Eide, Elisabeth, "Stream of consciousness and free indirect discourse in modern Chinese literature", ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'', 56 (1993), p.&nbsp;621 and P.M. Nayak (ed.), ''The voyage inward: stream of consciousness in Indian English fiction'' (New Delhi: Bahri Publications, 1999).</ref> Also in the 1920s [[expressionist]] [[Alfred Döblin]] went in a different direction with ''[[Berlin Alexanderplatz]]'' (1929), where interspersed non-fictional text fragments exist alongside the fictional material to create another new form of realism, which differs from that of stream-of-consciousness.

Later works like [[Samuel Beckett]]'s trilogy ''[[Molloy (novel)|Molloy]]'' (1951), ''[[Malone Dies]]'' (1951) and ''[[The Unnamable (novel)|The Unnamable]]'' (1953), as well as [[Julio Cortázar]]'s ''[[Hopscotch (Julio Cortázar novel)|Rayuela]]'' (1963) and [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973) all make use of the stream-of-consciousness technique. On the other hand, [[Robert Coover]] is an example of those authors who, in the 1960s, fragmented their stories and challenged time and sequentiality as fundamental structural concepts.
[[File:Chinua Achebe - Buffalo 25Sep2008.jpg|right|upright=0.9|thumb|[[Chinua Achebe]], Buffalo, 2008]]
The 20th century novel deals with a wide range of subject matter. [[Erich Maria Remarque]]'s ''[[All Quiet on the Western Front]]'' (1928) focuses on a young German's experiences of [[World War I]]. The [[Jazz Age]] is explored by American [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]], and the [[Great Depression]] by fellow American [[John Steinbeck]]. [[Totalitarianism]] is the subject of British writer [[George Orwell]]'s most famous novels. Existentialism is the focus of two writers from France: [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] with ''[[Nausea (novel)|Nausea]]'' (1938) and [[Albert Camus]] with ''[[The Stranger (Camus novel)|The Stranger]]'' (1942). The [[counterculture of the 1960s]], with its exploration of altered states of consciousness, led to revived interest in the mystical works of [[Hermann Hesse]]'', such as [[Steppenwolf (novel)|Steppenwolf]]'' (1927), and produced iconic works of its own, for example [[Ken Kesey]]'s ''[[One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (novel)|One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest]]'' and [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Novelists have also been interested in the subject of racial and [[gender identity]] in recent decades.<ref>See, for example, Susan Hopkins, ''Girl Heroes: The New Force in Popular Culture'' (Annandale NSW:, 2002).</ref> Jesse Kavadlo of [[Maryville University]] of St. Louis has described [[Chuck Palahniuk]]'s ''[[Fight Club (novel)|Fight Club]]'' (1996) as "a closeted [[Feminism|feminist]] critique".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kavadlo|first=Jesse|date=Fall–Winter 2005|title=The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist|journal=Stirrings Still: The International Journal of Existential Literature|volume=2|issue=2|pages=7}}</ref> [[Virginia Woolf]], [[Simone de Beauvoir]], [[Doris Lessing]], [[Elfriede Jelinek]] were feminist voices during this period.
Furthermore, the major political and military confrontations of the 20th and 21st centuries have also influenced novelists. The events of [[World War II]], from a German perspective, are dealt with by [[Günter Grass]]' ''[[The Tin Drum]]'' (1959) and an American by [[Joseph Heller]]'s ''[[Catch-22]]'' (1961). The subsequent [[Cold War]] influenced popular [[spy fiction|spy novels]]. Latin American self-awareness in the wake of the leftist revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a "[[Latin American Boom]]", linked to the names of novelists [[Julio Cortázar]], [[Mario Vargas Llosa]], [[Carlos Fuentes]] and [[Gabriel García Márquez]], along with the invention of a special brand of postmodern [[magic realism]].

Another major 20th-century social event, the so-called [[sexual revolution]] is reflected in the modern novel.<ref>See: Charles Irving Glicksberg, ''The Sexual Revolution in Modern American Literature'' (Nijhoff, 1971) and his ''The Sexual Revolution in Modern English Literature'' (Martinus Nijhoff, 1973).</ref> [[D.H. Lawrence]]'s ''[[Lady Chatterley's Lover]]'' had to be published in Italy in 1928 with British censorship only lifting its ban as late as 1960. [[Henry Miller]]'s ''[[Tropic of Cancer (novel)|Tropic of Cancer]]'' (1934) created a comparable US scandal. Transgressive fiction from [[Vladimir Nabokov]]'s ''[[Lolita]]'' (1955) to [[Michel Houellebecq]]'s ''[[Les Particules élémentaires]]'' (1998) pushed the boundaries, leading to the mainstream publication of explicitly erotic works such as [[Anne Desclos]]' ''[[Story of O]]'' (1954) and [[Anaïs Nin]]'s ''[[Delta of Venus]]'' (1978).

In the second half of the 20th century, [[postmodernism|Postmodern]] authors subverted serious debate with playfulness, claiming that art could never be original, that it always plays with existing materials.<ref>See for a first survey [[Brian McHale]], ''Postmodernist Fiction'' (Routledge, 1987) and John Docker, ''Postmodernism and popular culture: a cultural history'' (Cambridge University Press, 1994).</ref> The idea that language is self-referential was already an accepted truth in the world of [[pulp magazine|pulp fiction]]. A postmodernist re-reads popular literature as an essential cultural production. Novels from [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), to [[Umberto Eco]]'s ''[[The Name of the Rose]]'' (1980) and ''[[Foucault's Pendulum]]'' (1989) made use of [[intertextuality|intertextual]] references.<ref>See Gérard Genette, ''Palimpsests'', trans. Channa Newman & Claude Doubinsky (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press) and Graham Allan, ''Intertextuality'' (London/New York: Routledge, 2000); [[Linda Hutcheon]], ''Narcissistic Narrative. The Metafictional Paradox'' (London: Routledge, 1984) and Patricia Waugh, ''Metafiction. The Theory and Practice of Self-conscious Fiction'' (London: Routledge 1988).</ref>

===Genre fiction===
{{more citations needed section|date=February 2014}}
{{main|Genre fiction}}{{See also|Thriller (genre)|Western fiction|Speculative fiction|label 1=Thriller|label 2=Western}}

While the reader of so-called [[Classic book|serious literature]] will follow public discussions of novels, popular fiction production employs more direct and short-term marketing strategies by openly declaring a work's genre. Popular novels are based entirely on the expectations for the particular genre, and this includes the creation of a series of novels with an identifiable brand name. e.g. the [[Sherlock Holmes]] series by [[Arthur Conan Doyle]].

Popular literature holds a larger market share. [[Romance fiction]] had an estimated $1.375&nbsp;billion share in the US book market in 2007. [[Inspirational literature]]/religious literature followed with $819&nbsp;million, [[science fiction]]/[[Fantasy literature|fantasy]] with $700&nbsp;million, [[Mystery fiction|mystery]] with $650&nbsp;million and then classic literary fiction with $466&nbsp;million.<ref>See the page [http://www.rwanational.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics Romance Literature Statistics: Overview]  {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071223085813/http://www.rwanational.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics |date=2007-12-23 }} (visited March 16, 2009) of ''[http://www.rwanational.org/cs/home Romance Writers of America] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101203140439/http://www.rwanational.org/cs/home |date=2010-12-03 }}'' homepage. The subpages offer further statistics for the years since 1998.</ref>
[[File:Dan Brown bookjacket cropped.jpg|upright=0.7|thumb|[[Dan Brown]] ]]
Genre literature might be seen as the successor of the early modern [[chapbook]]. Both fields share a focus on readers who are in search of accessible reading satisfaction.<ref>John J. Richetti ''Popular Fiction before Richardson. Narrative Patterns 1700–1739'' (Oxford: OUP, 1969).</ref> The twentieth century love romance is a successor of the novels [[Madeleine de Scudéry]], [[Madame de La Fayette|Marie de La Fayette]], [[Aphra Behn]], and [[Eliza Haywood]] wrote from the 1640s into the 1740s. The modern [[adventure novel]] goes back to [[Daniel Defoe]]'s ''[[Robinson Crusoe]]'' (1719) and its immediate successors. Modern [[pornography]] has no precedent in the chapbook market but originates in libertine and [[hedonistic]] belles lettres, of works like [[John Cleland]]'s ''[[Fanny Hill]]'' (1749) and similar eighteenth century novels. [[Ian Fleming]]'s ''[[James Bond]]'' is a descendant of the anonymous yet extremely sophisticated and stylish narrator who mixed his love affairs with his political missions in ''La Guerre d'Espagne'' (1707). [[Marion Zimmer Bradley]]'s ''[[The Mists of Avalon]]'' is influenced by [[Tolkien]], as well as [[Arthurian literature]], including its nineteenth century successors. Modern [[horror fiction]] also has no precedent on the market of chapbooks but goes back to the elitist market of early nineteenth century [[Romantic literature]]. Modern popular science fiction has an even shorter history, from the 1860s.

The authors of popular fiction tend to advertise that they have exploited a controversial topic and this is a major difference between them and so-called elitist literature. [[Dan Brown]], for example, discusses, on his website, the question whether his ''Da Vinci Code'' is an anti-Christian novel.<ref>Dan Brown on his [http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html website] visited February 3, 2009. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090116181432/http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html |date=January 16, 2009 }}</ref> And because authors of popular fiction have a fan community to serve, they can risk offending [[literary critics]]. However, the boundaries between popular and serious literature have blurred in recent years, with [[postmodernism]] and [[poststructuralism]], as well as by adaptation of popular literary classics by the film and television industries.
[[File:J. K. Rowling 2010.jpg|right|upright=0.9|thumb|[[J. K. Rowling]], 2010]]
Crime became a major subject of 20th and 21st century genre novelists and [[crime fiction]] reflects the realities of modern industrialized societies. Crime is both a personal and public subject: criminals each have their personal motivations; detectives, see their moral codes challenged. [[Patricia Highsmith]]'s [[psychological thriller|thrillers]] became a medium of new psychological explorations. [[Paul Auster]]'s ''[[The New York Trilogy|New York Trilogy]]'' (1985–1986) is an example of experimental [[postmodern]]ist literature based on this genre.

[[Fantasy]] is another major area of commercial fiction, and a major example is [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' (1954/55), a work originally written for young readers that became a major cultural artefact. Tolkien in fact revived the tradition of European [[epic (genre)|epic]] literature in the tradition of [[Beowulf]], the North Germanic [[Edda]] and the [[King Arthur|Arthurian Cycles]].

[[Science fiction]] is another important type of genre fiction and has developed in a variety of ways, ranging from the early, technological adventure [[Jules Verne]] had made fashionable in the 1860s, to [[Aldous Huxley]]'s ''[[Brave New World]]'' (1932) about Western [[consumerism]] and technology. [[George Orwell]]'s ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'' (1949) deals with [[totalitarianism]] and [[surveillance]], among other matters, while [[Stanisław Lem]], [[Isaac Asimov]] and [[Arthur C. Clarke]] produced modern classics which focus on the interaction between humans and machines. The surreal novels of [[Philip K Dick]] such as ''[[The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch]]'' explore the nature of reality, reflecting the widespread recreational experimentation with drugs and cold-war paranoia of the 60's and 70's. Writers such as [[Ursula le Guin]] and [[Margaret Atwood]] explore feminist and broader social issues in their works. [[William Gibson]], author of the cult classic ''[[Neuromancer]]'' (1984), is one of a new wave of authors who explore post-apocalyptic fantasies and [[virtual reality]].

==21st century==
=== Non-traditional formats ===
{{See also|Cell phone novel|Visual novel|Hypertext fiction|Interactive fiction}}

A major development in this century has been novels published as [[ebooks]], and the growth of [[web fiction]], which is available primarily or solely on the Internet. A common type is the web [[Serial (literature)|serial]]: unlike most modern novels, web fiction novels are frequently published in parts over time. Ebooks are often published with a paper version. [[Audio books]] (a recording of a book reading) have also become common this century.

Another non-traditional format, popular in the 21st century, is the [[graphic novel]]. However, though a graphic novel may be "a fictional story that is presented in comic-strip format and published as a book",<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/graphic%20novel|title=graphic novel|dictionary=[[Merriam-Webster]]|access-date=2021-09-27|archive-date=2020-05-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200518031805/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/graphic%20novel|url-status=live}}</ref> the term can also refer to non-fiction and collections of short works.<ref>{{cite book |last=Goldsmith |first=Francisca |title=Graphic Novels Now: Building, Managing, And Marketing a Dynamic Collection |url= https://archive.org/details/graphicnovelsnow00fran |url-access=registration |year=2005 |publisher=[[American Library Association]] |isbn=978-0-8389-0904-1|page=16}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Karp |first1=Jesse |last2=Kress |first2=Rush |title=Graphic Novels in Your School Library |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AizO7StJA1kC |year=2011 |publisher=[[American Library Association]] |isbn=978-0-8389-1089-4|pages=4–6}}</ref> While the term graphic novel was coined in the 1960s<ref>{{cite book|last=Schelly|first=Bill|title=Founders of Comic Fandom: Profiles of 90 Publishers, Dealers, Collectors, Writers, Artists and Other Luminaries of the 1950s and 1960s|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y9YRzodtmKcC&pg=PA117|year=2010|publisher=McFarland|isbn=978-0-7864-5762-5|page=117}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Madden|first1=David|last2=Bane|first2=Charles|last3=Flory|first3=Sean M.|title=A Primer of the Novel: For Readers and Writers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qeX9AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA43|year=2006|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-1-4616-5597-8|page=43}}</ref> there were precursors in the 19th century.<ref name=coville>{{cite web |last=Coville |first=Jamie |url=http://www.thecomicbooks.com/old/Platinum.html |title=The History of Comic Books: Introduction and 'The Platinum Age 1897–1938' |publisher=TheComicBooks.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030415153354/http://www.collectortimes.com/~comichistory/Platinum.html |archive-date=April 15, 2003 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The author [[John Updike]], when he spoke to the Bristol Literary Society in 1969, on "[[the death of the novel]]", declared that he saw "no intrinsic reason why a doubly talented artist might not arise and create a comic strip novel masterpiece".<ref>{{cite book | last=Gravett | first=Paul | author-link=Paul Gravett | year=2005 | title=Graphic Novels: Stories To Change Your Life | edition=1st | publisher=Aurum Press Limited | isbn=978-1-84513-068-8 }}</ref> A popular Japanese version of the graphic novel can be found in [[manga]], and such works of fiction can be published [[Manga#Digital manga|in online versions]]. 

Audiobooks have been available since the 1930s in [[school]]s and public libraries, and to a lesser extent in music shops. Since the 1980s this medium has become more widely available, including more recently online.<ref>Matthew Rubery, ed. (2011). "Introduction". ''Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies''. Routledge. pp. 1–21. ISBN 978-0-415-88352-8.</ref>

Web fiction is especially popular in China, with revenues topping US$2.5 billion,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Cheung |first1=Rachel |title=China's online publishing industry – where fortune favours the few, and sometimes the undeserving |url=https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2144610/chinas-online-publishing-industry-where-fortune |website=South China Morning Post |access-date=19 June 2020 |date=May 6, 2018 |archive-date=9 November 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109040520/http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2144610/chinas-online-publishing-industry-where-fortune |url-status=live }}</ref> as well as in [[Web novels in South Korea|South Korea]]. Online literature such as web fiction inside China has over 500 million readers,<ref>{{cite web |title=Chinese Web Novel: The New Trending Pastime Entertainment |url=https://www.funwemake.com/web-novel/ |website=Funwemake |date=29 August 2021 |access-date=29 August 2021 |archive-date=27 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210927183126/https://www.funwemake.com/web-novel/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> therefore, online literature in China plays a much more important role than in the United States and the rest of the world.<ref>{{cite web |title=Top Ten Languages Used in the Web |url=https://internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm |website=Internet World Stats |access-date=31 March 2020}}</ref> Most books are available online, where the most popular novels find millions of readers. Joara is S. Korea's largest web novel platform with 140,000 writers, with an average of 2,400 serials per day and 420,000 works. The company posted 12.5&nbsp;billion won in sales in 2015 as profits were generated from 2009. Its membership is 1.1&nbsp;million, and it uses 8.6&nbsp;million cases a day on average (2016).<ref name="dkyobobook2">{{Cite journal|last=승환|first=이|title=웹출판의 발전과 과제(The Development and Tasks of Web Publication)|url=http://scholar.dkyobobook.co.kr/searchDetail.laf?barcode=4010025816177|access-date=2020-10-30|website=scholar.dkyobobook.co.kr|issue=78|doi=10.21732/skps.2017.78.97|archive-date=2023-04-06|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230406001103/http://scholar.dkyobobook.co.kr/searchDetail.laf?barcode=4010025816177|url-status=dead|url-access=subscription}}</ref> Since Joara's users have almost the same gender ratio, both fantasy and romance forms of [[genre fiction]] are in high demand.<ref name="dkyobobook">{{Cite web|last=민정|first=고(Ko MinJung)|title=한국 웹소설의 플랫폼 성장과 가능성(Platform Growth and Possibility of Korean Web Novels)|url=http://scholar.dkyobobook.co.kr/searchDetail.laf?barcode=4010027540252|access-date=2020-09-27|website=scholar.dkyobobook.co.kr|archive-date=2022-06-26|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220626104643/http://scholar.dkyobobook.co.kr/searchDetail.laf?barcode=4010027540252|url-status=dead}}</ref>

The development of ebooks and web novels has led to a rapid expansion of self-published works in recent years.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Watson |first1=Amy |title=Number of International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) assigned to self-published books in the United States from 2010 to 2018 |url=https://www.statista.com/statistics/605067/isbn-self-published-books/ |website=statista |date=9 November 2020}}</ref> Some authors who self-publish can make more money than through a traditional publisher.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Pope |first1=Bella Rose |title=Self-Publishing vs Traditional Publishing: How to Choose |url=https://self-publishingschool.com/self-publishing-vs-traditional-publishing/ |website=Self-Publishing School |date=9 September 2021 |access-date=27 September 2021 |archive-date=27 September 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210927060644/https://self-publishingschool.com/self-publishing-vs-traditional-publishing/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
However, despite the challenges from digital media print remains "the most popular book format among U.S. consumers, with more than 60 percent of adults having read a print book in the last twelve months" (in September 2021).<ref>{{cite web |last1=Watson |first1=Amy |title=U.S. book industry – statistics & facts |url=https://www.statista.com/topics/1177/book-market/ |website=statista |date=10 September 2021}}</ref>

==See also==
{{Portal|Novels}}
{{Div col|colwidth=15em}}
* [[Bengali novels]]
* [[Chain novel]]
* [[Children's literature]]
* [[Collage novel]]
* [[Gay literature]]
* [[Graphic novel]]
* [[Light novel]]
* [[Nautical fiction]]
* [[Novel in Scotland]]
* [[Proletarian novel]]
* [[Psychological novel]]
* [[Sociology of literature]]
* [[Social novel]]
* ''[[The True Story of the Novel]]''
* [[Visual novel]]
* [[War novel]]
* [[Web novel]]
* [[Young adult fiction]]
{{Div col end}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
{{refbegin|30em}}
Theories of the novel
* [[Bakhtin]], Mikhail. ''About novel''. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=JKZztxqdIpgC The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays]''. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981. [written during the 1930s]
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Burgess |first=Anthony |author-link=Anthony Burgess |title=novel: Definition, Elements, Examples, Types, & Facts |url=https://www.britannica.com/art/novel |encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]] |access-date=19 December 2021 |archive-date=11 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211111065052/https://www.britannica.com/art/novel |url-status=live }}
* {{cite book |first=Georg |last=Lukács |author-link=Georg Lukács |year=1971 |orig-year=1916 |title=The Theory of the Novel |translator=[[Anna Bostock]] |publisher=[[MIT Press]] |location=Cambridge}}
* {{cite book |first=David |last=Madden |orig-year=1979 |author2=Charles Bane |author3=Sean M. Flory |year=2006 |edition=revised |title=A Primer of the Novel: For Readers and Writers |publisher=Scarecrow Press |location=Lanham, MD |isbn=978-0-8108-5708-7}} Updated edition of pioneering typology and history of over 50 genres; index of types and technique, and detailed chronology.
* McKeon, Michael, ''Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

Histories of the novel
* {{cite book |first=Nancy |last=Armstrong |year=1987 |title=Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |isbn=978-0-19-504179-8}}
* {{cite book |first=Anthony |last=Burgess |year=1967 |title=The Novel Now: A Student's Guide to Contemporary Fiction |url=https://archive.org/details/novelnowstudents0000burg |url-access=registration |publisher=Faber |location=London }}
* {{cite book |first=Lennard J. |last=Davis |year=1983 |title=Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel |publisher=Columbia University Press |location=New York |isbn=978-0-231-05420-1}}
* {{cite book |first=Margaret Anne |last=Doody |year=1996 |title=[[The True Story of the Novel]] |publisher=Rutgers University Press |location=New Brunswick, NJ |isbn=978-0-8135-2168-8}}
* {{Cite EB1911|wstitle= Novel | volume= 19 |last= Gosse |first= Edmund William |author-link= Edmund William Gosse| pages = 833&ndash;838 }}
*{{cite book |last=Irr |first=Caren |author-link= |title=Toward the Geopolitical Novel: U.S. Fiction in the Twenty-First Century |publisher=Columbia University Press |series=Literature Now |date=December 2013 |url=https://cup.columbia.edu/book/toward-the-geopolitical-novel/9780231164405 |isbn=9780231164405 |archive-date=2025-01-07 |access-date=2025-01-07 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250107052709/https://cup.columbia.edu/book/toward-the-geopolitical-novel/9780231164405 |url-status=live }}
* Heiserman, Arthur Ray. ''The Novel Before the Novel'' (Chicago, 1977) {{ISBN|0-226-32572-5}}
* {{cite book |first=Michael |last=McKeon |year=1987 |title=The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740 |url=https://archive.org/details/originsofenglish0000mcke |url-access=registration |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |location=Baltimore |isbn=978-0-8018-3291-8 }}
* Mentz, Steve (2006). ''Romance for sale in early modern England: the rise of prose fiction''. Aldershot: Ashgate. {{ISBN|0-7546-5469-9}}
* Moore, Steven. ''The Novel: An Alternative History''. Vol. 1, Beginnings to 1600: Continuum, 2010. Vol. 2, 1600–1800: Bloomsbury, 2013.
* {{cite book |first=Timo |last=Müller |year=2017 |title=Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries |publisher=de Gruyter |location=Boston}}
* {{cite book |first=Leah |last=Price |year=2003 |title=The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel: From Richardson to George Eliot |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=London |isbn=978-0-521-53939-5}} from [[Leah Price]]
* Relihan, Constance C. (ed.), ''Framing Elizabethan fictions: contemporary approaches to early modern narrative prose'' (Kent, Ohio/ London: [[Kent State University Press]], 1996). {{ISBN|0-87338-551-9}}
* Richetti, John, ''The English Novel in History 1700-1780'' (Routledge, 1999).
* Roilos, Panagiotis, ''Amphoteroglossia: A Poetics of the Twelfth-Century Medieval Greek Novel'' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005).
* Rubens, Robert, "A hundred years of fiction: 1896 to 1996. (The English Novel in the Twentieth Century, part 12)." Contemporary Review, December 1996.
* [[Michael Schmidt (poet)|Schmidt, Michael]], ''The Novel: A Biography'' (Cambridge, MA: [[Belknap Press]], 2014).
* [[Jordan Alexander Stein|Stein, Jordan Alexander]], <i>When Novels Were Books</i> (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).
* {{cite book |first=Ian |last=Watt |author-link=Ian Watt |year=1957 |title=[[The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding]] |publisher=University of Los Angeles Press |location=Berkeley}}
{{refend}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* [http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/themes/the-novel-1780-to-1832 ''The novel 1780–1832''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211111234030/http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/themes/the-novel-1780-to-1832 |date=2021-11-11 }} at the British Library
* [http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/themes/the-novel-1832-to-1880 ''The novel 1832–1880''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210625112821/http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/themes/the-novel-1832-to-1880 |date=2021-06-25 }} at the British Library
* [https://archive.org/details/houseofsevengabl00hawt/page/n9/mode/2up ''The House of the Seven Gables'' with "Preface"]
*{{cite news |title=The 100 greatest novels of all time |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/100-greatest-novels-time/ |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220111/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/100-greatest-novels-time/ |archive-date=2022-01-11 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |access-date=4 March 2021 |work=The Telegraph |date=2 March 2021}}{{cbignore}}
{{Literary composition}}
{{Fiction writing}}
{{Books}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Novels| ]]
[[Category:Literary terminology]]