"We tend to think of the novel as a more-or-less modern invention..."

The Big Dig

Steven Moore's The Novel: An Alternative History (1600-1800)

Roger Boylan

March 17, 2014

"We tend to think of the novel as a more-or-less modern invention; the expression “Ancient Egyptian novel,” for example, seems a contradiction in terms. For this, we have etymology to thank. The word “novel” is a transliteration of the Italian novella (piece of news, chit-chat, tale), meaning a structured, realistic story, along the lines of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Although the use of novella in Italian dates back to the Middle Ages, the English word “novel” is little attested in its current sense until the eighteenth century, and this has led many critics and readers to believe that the thing itself only dates from then, too. Pamela(1740), a 600-page romance by Samuel Richardson, is usually considered the first fully realized English novel, with Richardson following in the footsteps of the seventeenth-century Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes, who gets the palm as the first real novelist and Don Quixote full honors as the first real novel. (Supposedly Richardson worried that the novel would turn out to be a fad.)"