Early English Novels: Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett
The Rise of the English Novel
Ian Watt, in ‘The Rise of the Novel’, discusses the challenges people faced in accessing literature before the 17th and 18th centuries. These challenges included limited literacy and economic constraints. Throughout the 17th century, there was a growing importance of merchants and tradesmen, and the entertainment of the middle classes became a legitimate objective of literature. The full emergence of the novel in the 18th century was a product of the middle class and appealed to middle-class ideals and sensibilities.
John Sutherland defines five “proto-novels” in Western culture that preceded the rise of the modern novel.
Key Figures in the Development of the English Novel
Daniel Defoe
Defoe was a Dissenter from a humble background with many vicissitudes. He is considered the father of the modern periodical, having founded The Review (1704). He did not see himself as a literary artist, focusing instead on simplicity and realism. His works, such as Robinson Crusoe, focus on ordinary people’s daily activities. Other notable works include Captain Singleton and Colonel Jack.
Jonathan Swift
Swift had English parents living in Ireland and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He is best known for Gulliver’s Travels. He cultivated a matter-of-fact narrative style. The preface, written by Richard Sympson, explains that his friend and relative Lemuel Gulliver had given him his papers to be edited for the public. The “Voyage to Lilliput” is a parody of contemporary English politics.
Samuel Richardson
Richardson was apprenticed to a printer in London, later becoming a compositor, corrector, and printer. He wrote love letters for damsels and compiled The Familiar Letters on Important Occasions, a collection of letters serving as models for semi-educated country readers. These letters aimed to inculcate sound moral and religious principles and instruct young women on how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue. His first novel, Pamela (1740), tells the story of a virtuous servant girl who eventually marries her master after rejecting his inappropriate advances. The story is told through letters to and from her parents and has a strong moral purpose. A second part was published in 1742.
Henry Fielding
Fielding came from an aristocratic family and was educated at Eton, with law studies at Leiden. Back in London, he became a successful playwright. In 1737, he turned back to law, becoming a famous magistrate known for his hard work and reforms. Shamela is a parody of Richardson’s Pamela. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is described as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’. It is a well-structured and plotted novel that addresses foundlings as a popular social problem. It incorporates theatrical contrivances of the day, such as missing heirs, mysterious parentage, glaring coincidences, and accidental meetings, all within a complex plot narrated in a picaresque style.
Tobias Smollett
- Scottish origin
- Studied Medicine at Glasgow University
- Critic of manners
- Followed the picaresque tradition with rambling episodes
Roderick Random is an autobiographical work with a breathless, episodic plot.
Laurence Sterne
- Born in Clonmel, Ireland
- Studied at Cambridge
- Took Holy Orders, got a living in York
Works:
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759-67)
- A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
Tristram Shandy
- Breaking of rules in language and punctuation.
- Friction between story and plot: Nobody gets anywhere; nothing happens. The hero is not born until halfway through the novel.
- An eccentric patchwork of anecdotes, digressions, reflections, jests, and parodies.
- Influence of thinkers like John Locke on space and time: Space is represented by the physicality of the book as an object.
- First exponent of internal and subjective characterization.
- An anti-novel, protesting against the arbitrary conventions of the realist novel; features a self-conscious narrator.
- Metafiction that appeals to the reader.