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history of the novel

Individual Novels Discussed

earliest, extant novels, ancient Greek novel

From Western antiquity—Greece and Rome—these are the earliest, extant novels:

• Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus (Greek, 4th century BC). A largely fictional account of the education of King Cyrus the Great of Persia. This is considered a precursor to the novel.
• Petronius, Satyricon (Latin, 1st century).
• Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Latin, 2nd century).
• Chariton, The Loves of Chaereas and Callirhoe (Greek, 1st century–2nd century).
• Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon (Greek, 2nd century).
• Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (Greek, 2nd century).
• Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale (Greek, 2nd century–3rd century).
• Heliodorus, Ethiopian Tale (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
• Anon, Acts of Xanthippe, Polyxena, and Rebecca (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
• Anon, Joseph and Aseneth (Greek, 1st century–5th century).
• Anon, The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre (Latin adaptation of lost Greek original, 5th century–6th century).

Asian works

Asian novel

Early important Asian novels include:

• Dandin, The Adventures of the Ten Princes (Sanskrit, 6th century–7th century).
• Banabhatta, Kadambari (Sanskrit, 7th century).
• Anon, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Japanese, 10th century).
• Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (Japanese, 11th century). Arguably the first novel, in the sense of a continued fictional narrative written by one author.
• Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Chinese, 14th century).
• Shi Nai'an and Luo Guanzhong, Water Margin (Chinese, 15th century).
• Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West (Chinese, 16th century).
• Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber (Chinese, 18th Century).

The 13th century

13th century literature

• Ramon Llull, Blanquerna (1283)

The 14th century

15th century literature

• Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (1353)
• Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (1386-1400)

The 15th century

15th century literature

• Antoine de la Sale, Petit Jehan de Saintré (1456)
• Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, (English, 1485).
• Joanot Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc (Catalan, 1490), chivalric romance.

The 16th century

16th century literature

• Jacopo Sannazaro, La Arcadia, (Italian, 1504), pastoral novel.
• Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, Amadis de Gaula (Spanish adaptation of lost 13th century original, 1508).
• Thomas More, Utopia (Latin, circa 1516).
• François Rabelais, Pantagruel, (French, 1532).
• Jorge de Montemayor, La Diana (Spanish, 1559), pastoral novel.
• Anon, Lazarillo de Tormes (Spanish, 1554).
• Mateo Alemán, Guzmán de Alfarache (Spanish, 1599).

The 17th century

17th century literature

• Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605).
• Miguel de Cervantes, Novelas Exemplares (1613).
• Francisco de Quevedo, El buscón (Spanish, 1626), masterpiece of the picaresque subgenre.
• Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus (German, 1668/1669), the Thirty Years War put into satirical autobiography.
• Aphra Behn, Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister (British, 1684/1685/1687), the first full blown epistolary novel.
• Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, (British, 1688).

The 18th century

18th century literature

• Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess, (British, 1719)
• Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, (British, 1719)
• Samuel Richardson, Pamela, (British, 1740)
• Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, (British, 1749)
• Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, (British, 1759-1767)
• Tobias Smollett, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, (Scottish, 1771)
• Ignacy Krasicki, The Adventures of Nicholas Experience (the first Polish novel, 1776).
• Frances Burney, Evelina, (British, 1778)
• Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, (British, 1794)
• Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma Courtney, (British, 1796)

The 19th century

19th century literature

• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (British, 1811).
• Aleksandr Pushkin, Eugene Onegin (Russian), 1825-1831.
• Stendhal, The Red and the Black (French, 1831).
• Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot (Old Goriot; French, 1835).
• Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma (French, 1839).
• Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time (Russian), 1839.
• Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed (Italian, 1840).
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (British, 1847).
• Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (British, 1847).
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (American, 1851).
• Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (British, 1857).
• Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (French,1857).
• Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov (Russian), 1859.
• Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (British, 1860-1861).
• Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons (Russian), 1861.
• Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (French, 1862).
• Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Russian, 1865).
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (Russian, 1866).
• George Eliot, Middlemarch (British, 1871).
• Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Russian), (1875-1877).
• Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, An Ancient Tale (Polish, 1876).
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Russian), 1880).
• Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (American, 1885).
• Gabriela Zapolska, Cathy the Caryatid (Polish, 1885 – 1886).
• Benito Pérez Galdós, Fortunata y Jacinta (Spanish, 1886-1887).
• Wilhelm Raabe, Stopfkuchen, 1891
• Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis (Polish, 1895).
• Bolesław Prus, Pharaoh (Polish, 1895).
• Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (Polish, 1897).
• Theodor Fontane, Der Stechlin, 1899

The 20th century

20th century literature

• Stefan Żeromski: Ashes (Polish, 1902 – 1903)
• Władysław Reymont: The Peasants (Polish, 1902 – 1909).
• Gabriela Zapolska, Seasonal Love (Polish, 1904).
• Marcel Proust In Search Of Lost Time (French, 1913-1927).
• James Joyce Ulysses (Irish, 1922).
• Thomas Mann The Magic Mountain (German, 1924).
• Franz Kafka The Trial (German, 1925).
• Betty Smith A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (American, 1943).
• Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (British, 1927).
• Robert Musil The Man Without Qualities (Austrian, 1930-1942).
• William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (American, 1930).
• Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Insatiability (Polish, 1930).
• Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz, The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma (Polish, 1932).
• Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke (Polish, 1937).
• Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Baalyakaalasakhi ( Malayalam, 1944)

The 20th century also saw the emergence of many notable novelists of non-European and non-U.S. backgrounds. The years 1960 – 1967, in particular, witnessed the Latin America novel boom:

• Mario Vargas Llosa, La ciudad y los perros (Spanish, 1963).
• Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad (Spanish).
• Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (1982)

The most notable African American novelists have included:

• Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
• James Baldwin, Another Country (1962)
• Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

Modernism continued into the late 20th century, sometimes becoming postmodernism; Toni Morrison (above) is part of that tradition:

• Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)
• Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
• Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1980)
• Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

Other novelists ignored or reacted against modernism:

• John Updike, the Rabbit tetralogy (1959–1990)