The English novel is an important part of English literature. This article mainly concerns novels, written in English, by novelists who were born or have spent a significant part of their lives in England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland (or any part of Ireland before 1922). However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to novels in other languages or novelists who are not primarily British, where appropriate.
Early novels in English
Historically, the English novel has generally been seen as beginning with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722),"Defoe", The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble. (Oxford: Oxforsd University Press,1996), p. 265. though modern scholarship cites Aphra Behn's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684) John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) and Behn's Oroonoko (1688) as more likely contenders, while earlier works such as Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur (1485), and even the "Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (c. 1400) have been suggested.J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984), pp. 433, 434. Another important early novel is Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, which is both a satire of human nature, as well as a parody of travellers' tales like Robinson Crusoe. The rise of the novel as an important literary genre is generally associated with the growth of the middle class in England.
Other major 18th-century English novelists are Samuel Richardson (1689–1761), author of the epistolary novels Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady (1747–48); Henry Fielding (1707–1754), who wrote Joseph Andrews (1742) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749); Laurence Sterne (1713–1768), who published Tristram Shandy in parts between 1759 and 1767;The Oxford Companion to English Literature, p. 947. Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774), author of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766); Tobias Smollett (1721–1771), a Scottish novelist best known for his comic picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), who influenced Charles Dickens; and Fanny Burney (1752–1840), whose novels "were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen," wrote Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796).The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1996), p. 151.
A noteworthy aspect of both the 18th- and 19th- century novel is the way the novelist directly addressed the reader. For example, the author might interrupt his or her narrative to pass judgment on a character, or pity or praise another, and inform or remind the reader of some other relevant issue.
Romantic period
The phrase 'Romantic novel' has several possible meanings. Here it refers to novels written during the Romantic era in literary history, which runs from the late 18th century until the beginning of the Victorian era in 1837. But to complicate matters there are novels written in the romance tradition by novelists like Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Meredith.J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms. (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1984), p. 582. In addition the phrase today is mostly used to refer to the popular pulp-fiction genre that focusses on romantic love. The Romantic period is especially associated with the poets William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George Byron, Percy Shelley and John Keats, though two major novelists, Jane Austen and Walter Scott, also published in the early 19th century.
Horace Walpole's 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto invented the Gothic fiction genre. The word gothic was originally used in the sense of medieval.J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms, p. 289. This genre combines "the macabre, fantastic, and supernatural" and usually involves haunted castles, graveyards and various picturesque elements.The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1996), p. 411. Later novelist Ann Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the Gothic villain which developed into the Byronic hero. Her most popular and influential work, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), is frequently described as the archetypal Gothic novel. Vathek (1786), by William Beckford, and The Monk (1796), by Matthew Lewis, were further notable early works in both the Gothic and horror genres.
Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818), is another important Gothic novel as well as an early example of science fiction.The Oxford Companion to English Literature, p. 886. The vampire genre fiction began with John William Polidori's The Vampyre (1819). This short story was inspired by the life of Lord Byron and his poem The Giaour. An important later work is Varney the Vampire (1845), where many standard vampire conventions originated: Varney has fangs, leaves two puncture wounds on the neck of his victims, and has hypnotic powers and superhuman strength. Varney was also the first example of the "sympathetic vampire", who loathes his condition but is a slave to it.Skal, David J. (1996). V is for Vampire, p. 99. New York: Plume. .
Among more minor novelists in this period Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) and Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) are worthy of comment. Edgeworth's novel Castle Rackrent (1800) is "the first fully developed regional novel in English" as well as "the first true historical novel in English" and an important influence on Walter Scott.The Oxford Companion to English Literature, p. 310. Peacock was primarily a satirist in novels such as Nightmare Abbey (1818) and The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829).
Jane Austen's (1775–1817) works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism.Litz, pp. 3–14; Grundy, "Jane Austen and Literary Traditions", The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, pp. 192–193; Waldron, "Critical Responses, Early", Jane Austen in Context, pp. 83, 89–90; Duffy, "Criticism, 1814–1870", The Jane Austen Companion, pp. 93–94. Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.A. Walton Litz, Jane Austen: A Study of Her Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. p. 142; Oliver MacDonagh, Jane Austen: Real and Imagined Worlds. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. pp. 66–75; Collins, 160–161. Austen brings to light the hardships women faced, who usually did not inherit money, could not work and where their only chance in life depended on the man they married. She reveals not only the difficulties women faced in her day, but also what was expected of men and of the careers they had to follow. This she does with wit and humour and with endings where all characters, good or bad, receive exactly what they deserve. Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews during her lifetime, but the publication in 1869 of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become accepted as a major writer. The second half of the 20th century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship and the emergence of a Janeite fan culture. Austen's works include Pride and Prejudice (1813) Sense and Sensibility (1811), Mansfield Park, Persuasion and Emma.
The other major novelist at the beginning of the early 19th century was Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), who was not only a highly successful British novelist but "the greatest single influence on fiction in the 19th century ... [and] a European figure".J. A. Cuddon, p. 435. Scott established the genre of the historical novel with his series of Waverley Novels, including Waverley (1814), The Antiquary (1816), and The Heart of Midlothian (1818).The Oxford Companion to English Literature, p. 890. However, Austen is today widely read and the source for films and television series, while Scott is less often read.
Victorian novel
It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. A number of women novelists were successful in the 19th century, although they often had to use a masculine pseudonym. At the beginning of the 19th century most novels were published in three volumes. However, monthly serialization was revived with the publication of Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers in twenty parts between April 1836 and November 1837. Demand was high for each episode to introduce some new element, whether it was a plot twist or a new character, so as to maintain the readers' interest. Both Dickens and Thackeray frequently published this way.The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies. (New York: Prentice Hall, 1990), pp. 97–8.
In the 1830s and '40s, novelists began to show the influence of social critics on their work, especially Thomas Carlyle, who raised the "Condition-of-England Question" to describe "the social and political upheavals which followed the Reform Act of 1832".Bloomsbury Guide, p. 101. In response, novelists wrote "Condition of England novels", which were in many ways a reaction to rapid industrialization, and the social, political and economic issues associated with it, and were a means of commenting on abuses of government and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic prosperity."James, Louis(2006)" Stories of the working-class poor were directed toward the middle class to help create sympathy and promote change. An early example is Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1837–38).
Charles Dickens emerged on the literary scene in the 1830s with the two novels already mentioned. Dickens wrote vividly about London life and struggles of the poor, but in a good-humoured fashion, accessible to readers of all classes. One of his most popular works to this day is A Christmas Carol (1843). In more recent years Dickens has been most admired for his later novels, such as Dombey and Son (1846–48), Great Expectations (1860–61), Bleak House (1852–53), Little Dorrit (1855–57), and Our Mutual Friend (1864–65). An early rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray, who during the Victorian period ranked second only to him, but he is now much less read and is known almost exclusively for Vanity Fair (1847). In that novel he satirizes whole swaths of humanity while retaining a light touch. It features his most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp.