The English novel is an important part of English literature.
This article mainly concerns novels, written in English, by novelistswho were born or have spent a
significant part of their lives in England, or Scotland, or Wales, or Northern Ireland (or 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
The
English novel has generally been seen as beginning with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders(1722),[1] though John
Bunyan's The Pilgrim's
Progress (1678) and Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) are also contenders,
while earlier works such as Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and even the
"Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Taleshave been suggested.[2] 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.[3] 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 (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;[4] 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;[5] and Fanny Burney (1752–1840), whose novels
"were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen," wrote Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782)
and Camilla (1796).[6]
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.[citation
needed]
Romantic
period[edit]
Main
article: Romantic
literature in English
Sir
Walter Scott
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.[7] In addition the phrase
today is mostly used to refer to the popular pulp-fictiongenre 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.[8] This genre combines
"the macabre, fantastic, and supernatural" and usually involves
haunted castles, graveyards and various picturesque elements.[9] 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), as another
important Gothic novel as
well as being an early example of science fiction.[10] 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.[11]
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.[12] 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.[13] Her plots, though
fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure
social standing and economic security.[14] 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".[15] 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).[16] However, Austen is today
widely read and the source for films and television series, while Scott is less
often read.
Victorian
novel[edit]
It
was in the Victorian era (1837–1901)
that the novel became the leading literary genre in English. Another
important fact is the number of women novelists who were successful in the 19th
century, even though 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.[17]
The
1830s and 1840s saw the rise of social novel, also known as social problem
novel, that "arose out of the social and political upheavals which
followed the Reform Act of 1832".[18] This was in many ways a
reaction to rapid industrialization,
and the social, political and economic issues associated with it, and was 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.[19] Stories of the working
class poor were directed toward 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) and 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.
The Brontë sisters were other significant
novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they
were first published but were subsequently accepted as classics. They had
written compulsively from early childhood and were first published, at their
own expense in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
The sisters returned to prose, producing a novel each the following year:
Charlotte's Jane Eyre,
Emily's Wuthering Heights and
Anne's Agnes Grey.
Later, Anne's The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall (1848) and Charlotte's Villette (1853) were published. Elizabeth Gaskell was also a successful
writer and first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in
1848. Gaskell's North and
South contrasts the lifestyle in the industrial north of
England with the wealthier south. Even though her writing conforms to Victorian
conventions, Gaskell usually frames her stories as critiques of contemporary
attitudes: her early works focused on factory work in the Midlands. She always
emphasised the role of women, with complex narratives and dynamic female
characters.[20]
Anthony Trollope (1815–82) was one of the
most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era.
Some of his best-loved works are set in the imaginary county of Barsetshire, including The Warden (1855) and Barchester Towers (1857). He also
wrote perceptive novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other
topical matters, including The Way with Live Now (1875).
Trollope's novels portrayed the lives of the landowning and professional
classes of early Victorian England.
George Eliot's (Mary Ann Evans (1819–80) first
novel Adam Bede was
published in 1859. Her works, especially Middlemarch 1871–72), are important
examples of literary realism,
and are admired for their combination of high Victorian literary detail
combined with an intellectual breadth that removes them from the narrow
geographic confines they often depict.
H. G.
Wells studying in London, taken c. 1890
An
interest in rural matters and the changing social and economic situation of the
countryside is seen in the novels of Thomas Hardy (1840–1928). A Victorian
realist, in the tradition of George Eliot, he was also influenced both in
his novels and poetry by Romanticism, especially by William Wordsworth.[21] Charles Darwin is another important
influence on Thomas Hardy.[22] Like Charles Dickens he
was also highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focussed
more on a declining rural society. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his
life, and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not
published until 1898, so that initially he gained fame as the author of such
novels as, Far from the
Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of
Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the
d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure(1895). He ceased writing
novels following adverse criticism of this last novel. In novels such as The Mayor of
Casterbridge and Tess of the
d'Urbervilles Hardy attempts to create modern works in the
genre of tragedy, that are modelled on the Greek drama,
especially Aeschylusand Sophocles, though in prose, not poetry, a
novel not drama, and with characters of low social standing, not nobility.[23] Another significant late
19th-century novelist is George Gissing (1857–1903) who published
23 novels between 1880 and 1903. His best known novel is New Grub Street (1891).[citation
needed]
Important
developments occurred in genre fiction in this era. Although pre-dated by John Ruskin's The King of
the Golden River in 1841, the history of the modern fantasy genre
is generally said to begin with George MacDonald, the influential author
of The Princess
and the Goblin and Phantastes (1858). William Morris was a popular English poet
who also wrote several fantasy novels during the latter part of the nineteenth
century. Wilkie Collins' epistolary novel The Moonstone (1868), is generally
considered the first detective novel in the English language,
while The Woman in
White is regarded as one of the finest sensation novels. H. G. Wells's (1866–1946) writing career began
in the 1890s with science fictionnovels
like The Time Machine (1895),
and The War of the Worlds (1898)
which describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians, and Wells is seen, along with
Frenchman Jules Verne (1828–1905),
as a major figure in the development of the science fiction genre. He also
wrote realistic fiction about the lower middle class in novels like Kipps (1905)
and The History of Mr
Polly (1910).
20th
century[edit]
The
major novelists writing in Britain at the start of the 20th century were an
Irishman James Joyce (1882–1941)
and two immigrants, American Henry James (1843–1916) and Pole Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)[citation
needed]. The modernist tradition in
the novel, with its emphasis "towards the ever more minute and analytic
exposition of mental life", begins with James and Conrad, in novels such
as The Ambassadors (1903), The Golden Bowl (1907) and Lord Jim (1900).[24] Other important early
modernists were Dorothy Richardson (1873–1957),
whose novel Pointed Roof (1915), is one of the earliest
example of the stream
of consciousness technique and D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), who wrote
with understanding about the social life of the lower and middle classes, and
the personal life of those who could not adapt to the social norms of his
time. Sons and Lovers (1913),
is widely regarded as his earliest masterpiece. There followed The Rainbow (1915), though it was
immediately seized by the police, and its sequel Women in Love published in 1920.[25] Lawrence attempted to
explore human emotions more deeply than his contemporaries and challenged the
boundaries of the acceptable treatment of sexual issues, most notably in Lady Chatterley's
Lover, which was privately published in Florence in 1928.
However, the unexpurgated version of this novel was not published until 1959.[26] Then in 1922
Irishman James Joyce's
important modernist novel Ulysses appeared. Ulysses has
been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement".[27] Set during one day
in Dublin in June 1904, in it Joyce creates
parallels with Homer's epic poem the Odyssey.[28]
Another
significant modernist in the 1920s was Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), who was an
influential feminist and a major stylistic innovator associated with the stream-of-consciousness technique.
Her novels include Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and The Waves (1931). Her essay
collection A Room of One's Own (1929)
contains her famous dictum; "A woman must have money and a room of her own
if she is to write fiction".[29]
But
while modernism was to become an important
literary movement in the early decades of the new century, there were also many
fine novelists who were not modernists. This include E.M. Forster ((1879–1970), John Galsworthy ((1867–1933) (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1932), whose
novels include The Forsyte Saga, Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) author
of The Old Wives' Tale,
and H. G. Wells (1866–1946). Though Forster's
work is "frequently regarded as containing both modernist and Victorian
elements".[30] E. M. Forster's A Passage to India (1924),
reflected challenges to imperialism, while his earlier works such as A Room with a View (1908)
and Howards End (1910),
examined the restrictions and hypocrisy of Edwardian society in England. The most
popular British writer of the early years of the 20th century was arguably Rudyard Kipling ((1865–1936), a highly
versatile writer of novels,
short stories and poems and to date the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for
Literature (1907).
A
significant English writer in the 1930s and 1940s was George Orwell (1903–50), who is
especially remembered for his satires of totalitarianism, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
and Animal Farm (1945). Evelyn Waugh (1903–66) satirised the
"bright young things" of the 1920s and 1930s, notably in A Handful of Dust (1934), and Decline and Fall (1928), while Brideshead Revisited (1945)
has a theological basis, setting out to examine the effect of divine grace on
its main characters.[31] Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) published his
famous dystopia Brave New World in 1932, the same
year as John Cowper Powys's
(1872–1963) A Glastonbury Romance. Samuel Beckett (1906–89) published his
first major work, the novel Murphy in 1938. This same year Graham Greene's (1904–91) first major
novel Brighton Rock was
published. Then in 1939 James Joyce's
published Finnegans Wake.
In this work Joyce creates a special language to express the consciousness of a
character who is dreaming.[32]
,
1906
Graham Greene was an important novelist
whose works span the 1930s to the 1980s. Greene was a convert to Catholicism
and his novels explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern
world. Notable for an ability to combine serious literary acclaim with broad
popularity, his novels include, The Heart of the
Matter (1948), A Burnt-Out Case (1961), and The
Human Factor (1978). Evelyn Waugh's (1903–66) career also continued
after World War II, and in "1961 he completed his most considerable work,
a trilogy about the war entitled Sword of Honour.[33] In 1947 Malcolm Lowrypublished Under the
Volcano, while George Orwell's
satire of totalitarianism, 1984, was published in 1949. One of the
most influential novels of the immediate post-war period was William Cooper's
(1910–2002) naturalistic Scenes from Provincial Life (1950),
which was a conscious rejection of the modernist tradition.[34] Other novelists writing
in the 1950s and later were: Anthony Powell (1905–2000) whose
twelve-volume cycle of novels A Dance to the
Music of Time (1951–75), is a comic examination of
movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and
military life in the mid-20th century; comic novelist Kingsley Amis is best known for his
academic satire Lucky Jim (1954); Nobel Prize laureate William Golding's allegorical novel Lord of the Flies (1954), explores
how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British
schoolboys marooned on a deserted island; philosopher Iris Murdoch was a prolific writer of novels that deal with such
things as sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her
works including Under the Net (1954), The
Black Prince (1973) and The Green Knight (1993).
Scottish writer Muriel Spark's also
began publishing in the 1950s. She pushed the boundaries of realism in her
novels. Her first, The Comforters (1957), concerns a
woman who becomes aware that she is a character in a novel; The
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), at times takes the reader
briefly into the distant future to see the various fates that befall its
characters. Anthony Burgess is
especially remembered for his dystopian
novel A Clockwork
Orange (1962), set in the not-too-distant future, which was
made into a film by Stanley Kubrick in 1971. In the entirely different genre
of Gothic fantasy Mervyn Peake (1911–68) published his highly
successful Gormenghast trilogy between
1946 and 1959.
Immigrant
authors played a major role in post-war literature. Doris Lessing (1919) from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), published her first novel The
Grass is Singing in 1950, after immigrating to England. She initially
wrote about her African experiences. Lessing soon became a dominant presence in
the English literary scene, frequently publishing right through the century,
and won the Nobel prize for literature in 2007. Salman Rushdie (born 1945) is another
among a number of post Second World War writers from the former British
colonies who permanently settled in Britain. Rushdie achieved fame with Midnight's Children 1981,
which was awarded both the James Tait
Black Memorial Prize and Booker prize, and named Booker of Bookers in
1993. His most controversial novel The Satanic Verses (1989),
was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. V. S. Naipaul (born 1932), born in Trinidad, was another immigrant, who wrote
among other things A House for Mr Biswas (1961) and A Bend in the River (1979).
Naipaul won the Nobel Prize in
Literature.[35] Also from the West Indies George Lamming (born 1927) is best
remembered for In the Castle of the Skin (1953). Another
important immigrant writer Kazuo Ishiguro (born 1954) was born
in Japan, but his parents immigrated to Britain
when he was six.[36] His works include, The Remains of the
Day 1989, Never Let Me Go 2005.
Scotland
has in the late 20th-century produced several important novelists,
including James Kelman (born
1946), who like Samuel Beckett can create humour out of the most grim
situations. How Late it Was,
How Late (1994), won the Booker Prize that year; A. L. Kennedy (born 1965) whose 2007
novel Day was
named Book of the Year in the Costa Book Awards.[37] In 2007 she won the Austrian
State Prize for European Literature;[38] Alasdair Gray (born 1934) whose Lanark: A Life
in Four Books (1981) is a dystopian fantasy set in his home
town Glasgow. Another contemporary Scot is Irvine Welsh, whose novel Trainspotting (1993),
gives a brutal depiction of the lives of working class Edinburgh drug users.[39]
Angela Carter (1940–1992) was a novelist
and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works.
Writing from the 1960s until the 1980s, her novels include, The
Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) and Nights at the Circus (1984). Margaret Drabble(born 1939) is a novelist,
biographer and critic, who has published from the 1960s until this century. Her
older sister, A. S. Byatt (born
1936) is best known for Possession published
in 1990.
Martin Amis (born 1949) is one of the
most prominent of contemporary British novelists. His best-known novels
are Money (1984)
and London Fields (1989). Pat Barker (born 1943) has won many
awards for her fiction. Novelist and screenwriter Ian McEwan (born 1948) is another of
contemporary Britain's most highly regarded writers. His works include The
Cement Garden (1978) and Enduring Love (1997), which
was made into a film. In 1998 McEwan won the Man Booker Prize with Amsterdam,
while Atonement (2001) was made into an Oscar-winning film. McEwan was awarded
the Jerusalem Prize in
2011. Zadie Smith's (born
1975) Whitbread Book Award winning
novel White Teeth (2000),
mixes pathos and humour, focusing on the later lives of two war time friends in
London. Julian Barnes (born
1946) is another successful living novelist, who won the 2011 Man Booker Prize
for his book The Sense of an Ending, while three of his earlier
books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Among
popular novelists Daphne Du Maurier wrote Rebecca, a mystery novel, in 1938
and W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) Of Human Bondage (1915), a strongly
autobiographical novel, is generally agreed to be his masterpiece. In genre fiction Agatha Christie was an important writer
of crime novels, short
stories and plays, best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her
successful West End theatre plays. Christie's novels include Murder on the
Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937), and And Then There
Were None (1939). Another popular writer during the Golden
Age of detective fiction was Dorothy L. Sayers, while Georgette Heyer created the historical romance genre.
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