The Project Gutenberg EBook of The English Novel, by George Saintsbury

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Title: The English Novel

Author: George Saintsbury

Release Date: December 26, 2004 [EBook #14469]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE ENGLISH NOVEL

BY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

LONDON: J.M. DENT & SONS LTD.
BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 1913
NEW YORK: E.P. BUTTON & CO.

PREFACE

It is somewhat curious that there is, so far as I know, no complete
handling in English of the subject of this volume, popular and important
though that subject has been. Dunlop's _History of Fiction_, an
excellent book, dealt with a much wider matter, and perforce ceased its
dealing just at the beginning of the most abundant and brilliant
development of the English division. Sir Walter Raleigh's _English
Novel_, a book of the highest value for acute criticism and grace of
style, stops short at Miss Austen, and only glances, by a sort of
anticipation, at Scott. The late Mr. Sidney Lanier's _English Novel and
the Principle of its Development_ is really nothing but a laudatory
study of "George Eliot," with glances at other writers, including
violent denunciations of the great eighteenth-century men. There are
numerous monographs on parts of the subject: but nothing else that I
know even attempting the whole. I should, of course, have liked to deal
with so large a matter in a larger space: but one may and should
"cultivate the garden" even if it is not a garden of many acres in
extent. I need only add that I have endeavoured, not so much to give
"reviews" of individual books and authors, as to indicate what Mr.
Lanier took for the second part of his title, but did not, I think,
handle very satisfactorily in his text.

I may perhaps add, without impropriety, that the composition of this
book has not been hurried, and that I have taken all the pains I could,
by revision and addition as it proceeded, to make it a complete survey
of the Novel, as it has com