The Birth of the English Novel

Typically, a novel is an extended work of fiction, written in prose form, printed, and bound in a form of a book with a collection of pages. Novel-writing, production, sales, and consumption reached new heights in the Augustan Age, also known as the Neo-Classical Age in England. The four cogs in the wheels of the novel as a genre are Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, and Sterne. The novel that was reported to be the most popular one written and published in the eighteenth century was “Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded” by Samuel Richardson. This was the beginning of the glorious era of novel reading enthusiasts and writers. Now there are a plethora of factors that contributed to this rise of the English novel and those are as follows.

The birth of the English novel in England was directly proportional to the rise in the middle class populating there because of the advent of the Industrial Revolution from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. This completely revolutionized the way things were going about; be it from the ages to the manufacturing, from mining to transport and technology. The middle class quickly rose to great power. People from across Europe were dwelling in England and learning English for greater job opportunities, thanks to the Industrial Revolution again. Learning English meant that they could and needed to read if they wanted to and hence they turned to read novels. Moreover, later during the Industrial Revolution, introducing a superfluity of machinery meant that manual labor was no longer an essential prerequisite. Humans just had to operate that machine to get the job done in less than half the time that they used to spend on it initially, which meant that they had a lot of free time at their disposal. Novel-reading, hence, became a highly sought-after and popular activity for leisure.

Secondly, the ban on theatre by Cromwell in the seventeenth century during the Puritan Age led to a steep decline of Drama, which was highly appreciated by massive audiences in the Elizabethan Age. This shift, therefore, compelled people to turn to novel reading for pleasure and entertainment. Of course, this entire shift took roughly seventy to eighty years to occur completely. Moreover, going to theatres and watching plays was exclusive to the aristocrats mainly, because of how expensive the ticket used to be. Before novels came into the picture, the lower and middle class would not have the privilege of availing this form of entertainment. Therefore, the introduction of novels meant that they had a greater market, for how cheap they were compared to theatre tickets, and hence more widely read and available, irrespective of what social stature they belonged to. In addition to this, lots of playwrights resorted to novel-writing because it gave them more creative liberty than writing drama. On top of that, the construct of a novel was generally free from classical constraints, as noted by David Daiches,, and therefore more relevant to the masses of the new age.

Furthermore, an integral factor that resulted in novels stealing the limelight was the fall or decline or Romance Tales which depended prodigiously on past incidents and adventures for its chief domain. Moreover, for how dated and old the Romances had gotten, the aristocrats that were its biggest consumers soon got bored of them. They fell short of interest in them because the settings they were written in were extremely outdated and centuries old. Next, the romances were written in the third person and therefore seemed impersonal. While on the other hand, novels were not only written in the first person but felt deeply personal too. The readers immediately found themselves completely immersed in it, getting to know the thought processes and deep emotions of the characters that they were reading about. Romances were like epics; talking about great heroes and their great adventures, using extremely elevated language, and the heroes depicted in an exalted manner. The novel, in contrast, had commoners as their main characters had settings like in a village or the countryside, and dealt with issues that were relevant and relatable to the masses. They dealt with characters belonging from the middle class, struggling to maintain their morality in weird circumstances. The plot of the novel was also pretty precise and compact, unlike in Romances which were extensively written and had themes that were larger than life.

In addition to that, the introduction and expansion of the Printing Press before the seventeenth century had news printed in the name of a “novel”. The “novel”, therefore, used to be either fictional or factual in nature or brought the journalist ballad into the picture. In the eighteenth century, however, things began to change. The Printing Press changed its form of writing from verse to prose and people became cognizant about distinguishing news from the novel. Authors began to get their books printed from these Printing Presses and got them bound neatly to sell them. These books had themes that were extremely real in nature. It covered topics about the common life of a common man with characters that had an extremely common name like “Joseph”, “Andrews” and “Pamela” etc.

The eighteenth century was notorious for gender biases and inequality of powers due to which women were not allowed to leave their houses while their male counterparts went to parties and casinos, walks, dinners to have fun while their women remained at home. In their time of leisure, therefore, they resorted to reading novels as their sole form of keeping themselves occupied and entertained. The culture of mobile libraries on carts became exceedingly popular. These carts were loaded with books for sale and extremely convenient for ladies at home. Members in a book exchange program got free, new books in exchange for old ones that they have read already. This gave a greater chance for people to read an assortment of books written by a variety of writers.

There was a general rise in literacy rates in the eighteenth century. A plethora of charity schools was opening up in the entirety of England, making education widely available to the poor. Their ability to read ensured that novels are being read widely. More demand meant more sales and hence, lots of new and old novel writers came into the picture.

Read about Modernist English Literature here.