E. F. Benson

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A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story (of something new)", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "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, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also commonly called novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of the vernacular classic Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain. Later developments occurred after the 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. Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.

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

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Title-page engraving from an 1897 edition of Le Père Goriot

Le Père Goriot is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac, included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine. Widely considered as Balzac's most important novel, it marks the first serious use by the author of characters who had appeared in other books, a technique that distinguishes Balzac's fiction and makes La Comédie humaine unique among bodies of work. It is also noted as an example of his realist style, using minute details to create character and subtext. Set in Paris in 1819, Le Père Goriot follows the intertwined lives of three characters: the elderly doting Goriot; a mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin; and a naive law student named Eugène de Rastignac. The story takes place during the Bourbon Restoration, which brought about profound changes in French society; the struggle of individuals to secure upper-class status is ubiquitous in the book. The novel was released to mixed reviews. Some critics praised the author for his complex characters and attention to detail; others condemned him for his many depictions of corruption and greed. A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage.

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In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat.In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practiced today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

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...that the romantic epistles Letters of a Portuguese Nun were from a nun to her lover?
...that some elements of the Jules Verne adventure story Two Years' Vacation are to be found in William Golding's Lord of the Flies, written 66 years later?
...that the Viagens Interplanetarias series of science fiction stories by L. Sprague de Camp was influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian novels?

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General images

The following are images from various novel-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) (from Novel)
Image 2Chapbook (c. 1800) of Jack the Giant Killer (from Chapbook)
Image 3Harlequin novels (from Romance novel)
Image 4The frontispiece of a late 18th-century chapbook edition of Voltaire's The Extraordinary Tragical Fate of Calas, depicting Jean Calas being broken on the wheel (from Chapbook)
Image 51915 novelization of the original 1904 play Peter and Wendy (from Novelization)
Image 6Chinua Achebe, Buffalo, 2008 (from Novel)
Image 7Chaucer reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early-15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (from Novel)
Image 8Image from a Victorian edition of Walter Scott's Waverley (1814) (from Novel)
Image 9Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1741) (from Novel)
Image 10J. K. Rowling, 2010 (from Novel)
Image 11Novelization of chapter 8 of the film series Les Vampires (1915–16) (from Novelization)
Image 12One of the most influential novels on the picaresque genre was The Golden Ass by Apuleius, which he published sometime in the 2nd century AD. (ms. Vat. Lat. 2194, Vatican Library) (1345 illustration). (from Picaresque novel)
Image 13First edition of Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers (1870) (from Novel)
Image 14Woodcut of a fairy-circle from a 17th-century chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 15Paper as the essential carrier: Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction (from Novel)
Image 16Dan Brown (from Novel)
Image 17Statue of Ostap Bender in Elista (from Picaresque novel)
Image 18Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol.6, pp. 70–71 (1769) (from Novel)
Image 19Madame de Pompadour spending her afternoon with a book (François Boucher, 1756) (from Novel)
Image 20Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladivostok, 1995 (from Novel)
Image 21King Kong (1932) novelization of King Kong (1933) (from Novelization)
Image 22"Oh Edward! How can you?", a late-19th-century illustration from Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen, a pioneer of the genre (from Romance novel)
Image 23A light novel bookstore in Macau (from Light novel)
Image 24Richard Head, The English Rogue (1665) (from Novel)
Image 25The picaresque genre began with the Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) (Pictured: Its title page) (from Picaresque novel)
Image 26A modern chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 271474: 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. (from Novel)
Image 28Intimate short stories: The Court and City Vagaries (1711). (from Novel)
Image 291719 newspaper reprint of Robinson Crusoe (from Novel)
Image 30Paranormal Novels: The Twilight Saga (from Romance novel)
Image 31Adventure novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines. (from Adventure fiction)
Image 32A nineteenth-century painting by the Swiss-French painter Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre depicting a scene from Longus's Daphnis and Chloe (from Romance novel)