The Novel as a Literary Genre

The eighteenth century introduced two new forms to English literature, one of which is the novel.
The novel caught the spirit of the eighteenth century, being intellectual, sentimental, and realistic.
A novel is a long narrative fiction that describes intimate human experiences in prose form.
The word 'novel' is derived from the Italian 'novella', meaning 'new'.
Novels narrate stories with details of time, place, nature, people, and their minds, creating a picture of the society at that time.

The novel has a history of about two thousand years.
Greek Romances (2nd to 6th century) are among the early precursors of the novel.
These imaginative stories of ideal love and marvelous adventures profoundly affected creative writing for the next thousand years.
Murasaki Shikibu's 'Tale of Genji' (1010) is considered the world's first novel.
The European novel is often said to begin with 'Don Quixote' by Miguel de Cervantes (1605-1615).

The appearance of newspapers and magazines in the 18th century attracted a large number of readers from the middle class.
These readers had little interest in romances and tragedies, leading to a need for a new type of literature that expressed the new ideas of the 18th century.
The 18th century literature was characterized by realism and denial of romantic features.
The novel originated as a literary form in England after 1740.
Increase in trade and commerce, along with the Industrial Revolution, gave rise to the middle class, who were appealed to by the novels depicting everyday life and problems of common people.

'The Pilgrim's Progress' by John Bunyan (1678) and 'Oroonoku' by Aphra Behn (1688) initiated the tradition of English novels.
Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders) and Jonathan Swift ('Gulliver's Travels') followed, contributing to the tradition.
Other major novelists of the 18th century include Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Ann Radcliffe.