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A History of English Prose Fiction

Chapter 2: PREFACE.
By Bayard Tuckerman
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About This Book

The book offers a chronological survey of English prose fiction, tracing its evolution from medieval chivalric romances—synthesizing northern, classical, and eastern legendary elements—through Chaucer and Elizabethan writers, Puritan allegory and the Restoration, into the eighteenth-century rise of the novel and its innovators, and onward to nineteenth-century varieties such as novels of manners, historical fiction, social-purpose narratives, and fanciful romances. It situates literary change in social, religious, and institutional contexts, describes representative styles (including obscure earlier texts) so general readers can apprehend them, and assesses the uses and misuses of fiction rather than providing exhaustive authorial criticism.

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Title: A History of English Prose Fiction

Author: Bayard Tuckerman

Release date: March 13, 2005 [eBook #15350]
Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Ted Garvin, Lynn Bornath, Leonard Johnson and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF ENGLISH PROSE FICTION ***

A HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH PROSE FICTION




BY


BAYARD TUCKERMAN
NEW YORK & LONDON
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press
1894
COPYRIGHT BY
G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS
1882
TO

MY FATHER,


THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

PREFACE.

It is attempted in this volume to trace the gradual progress of English Prose Fiction from the early romance to the novel of the present day, in such connection with the social characteristics of the epochs to which these works respectively belong, as may conduce to a better comprehension of their nature and significance.

As many of the earlier specimens of English fiction are of a character or a rarity which makes any acquaintance with them difficult to the general public, I have endeavored so to describe their style and contents that the reader may obtain, to some degree, a personal knowledge of them.

The novels of the nineteenth century are so numerous and so generally familiar, that, in the chapter devoted to this period, I have sought rather to point out the great importance which fiction has assumed, and the variety of forms which it has taken, than to attempt any exhaustive criticism of individual authors—a task already sufficiently performed by writers far more able to do it justice.

THE AUTHOR.

"The Benedick."
NEW YORK, Aug. 22, 1882.

B.T.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
THE ROMANCE OF CHIVALRY  1
 
CHAPTER II
CHAUCER, TALES OF THE YEOMANRY, SIR T. MORE'S "UTOPIA"  42
 
CHAPTER III
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. LYLY, GREENE, LODGE, SIDNEY  60
 
CHAPTER IV.
THE PURITANS, "THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS"   102
 
CHAPTER V.
THE RESTORATION. ROGER BOYLE, MRS. MANLEY, MRS. BEHN  112
 
CHAPTER VI.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. SWIFT, ADDISON, DEFOE, RICHARDSON, FIELDING, SMOLLETT  134
 
CHAPTER VII.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CONTINUED. STERNE, JOHNSON, GOLDSMITH, AND OTHERS. MISS BURNEY AND THE FEMALE NOVELISTS. THE ROMANTIC REVIVAL  220
 
CHAPTER VIII.
THE NOVEL IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. THE NOVEL OF LIFE AND MANNERS. OF SCOTCH LIFE. OF IRISH LIFE. OF ENGLISH LIFE. OF AMERICAN LIFE. THE HISTORICAL NOVEL. THE NOVEL OF PURPOSE. THE NOVEL OF FANCY. USE AND ABUSE OF FICTION  274