Modern novel

Title page from Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) - Samuel Richardson

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A Scheme for abolishing all Words is one of the wittiest and smartest comments on semantics. (Illustration: extreme close-up from the movie "The Big Swallow" (1901), produced and directed by James Williamson (1855-1933)

"The modern novel is born with Richardson, Fielding, Rousseau and Prévost. It then procedes to the The Monk and Ann Radcliffe" --Marquis de Sade, 1800 in Reflections on the Novel.

The first modern novel has generally been ascribed to a series of picaresque novels, most famously Don Quixote (1605) by Cervantes.

Later candidates to the title "modern novel" include Pamela (1740) by Richardson, Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen, The Red and the Black (1831) by Stendhal, and Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert. Because of the attention given in these novels to the psychological development of the characters, these novels are also called the first psychological novels.

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