Portal:Novels

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A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the Italian: novella for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning 'new'. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval chivalric romance, and the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term romance. Such romances should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love. M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The romance, on the other hand, encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. In reality, such works are nevertheless also commonly called novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of the vernacular classic Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain. Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era. Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century with Robinson Crusoe.

Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books, web novels, and ebooks. Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels. While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular recently. (Full article...)

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Ace Books is the oldest active specialty publisher of science fiction and fantasy books (example pictured) and issued many of the best known science fiction writers of the 1950s and 1960s. The company was founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn, and began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns. It soon branched out into other genres, publishing its first science fiction title in 1953; this was a successful innovation, and within a few years, such titles outnumbered both mysteries and westerns. Ace became known for the tête-bêche binding format used for many of its early books, although it did not originate the format. Most of the early titles were published in this "Ace Double" format, and Ace continued to issue books in varied genres, bound tête-bêche, until 1973. These have proved attractive to book collectors, and some rare titles in mint condition command prices up to $1,000. It was one of the leading science fiction publishers for its first ten years, but its fortunes began to decline after the death of owner A. A. Wyn in 1967. Two prominent editors, Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, left in 1971, and in 1972 Ace was sold to Grosset & Dunlap. It is now an imprint of Penguin Group (USA).

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Religion is a solace to many people and it is even conceivable that some religion, somewhere, really is Ultimate Truth. But in many cases, being religious is merely a form of conceit. The Bible Belt faith in which I was brought up encouraged me to think that I was better than the rest of the world; I was 'saved' and they were 'damned' — we were in a state of grace and the rest of the world were 'heathens' and by 'heathen' they meant such people as our brother Mahmoud. It meant that an ignorant, stupid lout who seldom bathed and planted his corn by the phase of the Moon could claim to know the final answers of the Universe. That entitled him to look down his nose at everybody else. Our hymn book was loaded with such arrogance — mindless, conceited, self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us and us alone, and what hell everybody else was going to catch come Judgment Day.

Stranger in a Strange Land

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...that Michael Moorcock wrote the book The City in the Autumn Stars in tandem with The Laughter of Carthage, one during the day, and the other at night?
...that Po-on and the rest of the Rosales Saga novel series by F. Sionil José resemble the story-telling tradition found in the U.S.A. trilogy by John Dos Passos?
...that the names of the two main characters of Nicholas Sparks' 2002 novel Nights in Rodanthe are a Christmas present to his in-laws?

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General images

The following are images from various novel-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Dan Brown (from Novel)
Image 21719 newspaper reprint of Robinson Crusoe (from Novel)
Image 3Richard Head, The English Rogue (1665) (from Novel)
Image 41474: The customer in the copyist's shop with a book he wants to have copied. This illustration of the first printed German Melusine looked back to the market of manuscripts. (from Novel)
Image 5Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladivostok, 1995 (from Novel)
Image 6Adventure novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines. (from Adventure fiction)
Image 7One of the most influential novels on the picaresque genre was The Golden Ass by Apuleius, which he published sometime in the 2nd century AD. (ms. Vat. Lat. 2194, Vatican Library) (1345 illustration). (from Picaresque novel)
Image 8Chaucer reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early-15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (from Novel)
Image 9Paranormal Novels: The Twilight Saga (from Romance novel)
Image 10A nineteenth-century painting by the Swiss-French painter Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre depicting a scene from Longus's Daphnis and Chloe (from Romance novel)
Image 11A modern chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 12Intimate short stories: The Court and City Vagaries (1711). (from Novel)
Image 131915 novelization of the original 1904 play Peter and Wendy (from Novelization)
Image 14The picaresque genre began with the Spanish novel Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) (Pictured: Its title page) (from Picaresque novel)
Image 15Chapbook (c. 1800) of Jack the Giant Killer (from Chapbook)
Image 16"Oh Edward! How can you?", a late-19th-century illustration from Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen, a pioneer of the genre (from Romance novel)
Image 17Woodcut of a fairy-circle from a 17th-century chapbook (from Chapbook)
Image 18Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1741) (from Novel)
Image 19Novelization of chapter 8 of the film series Les Vampires (1915–16) (from Novelization)
Image 20Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) (from Novel)
Image 21Paper as the essential carrier: Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction (from Novel)
Image 22A light novel bookstore in Macau (from Light novel)
Image 23Madame de Pompadour spending her afternoon with a book (François Boucher, 1756) (from Novel)
Image 24Image from a Victorian edition of Walter Scott's Waverley (1814) (from Novel)
Image 25Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol.6, pp. 70–71 (1769) (from Novel)
Image 26J. K. Rowling, 2010 (from Novel)
Image 27King Kong (1932) novelization of King Kong (1933). The novel was based on the screenplay and was marketing for the film which was released two months later. (from Novelization)
Image 28The frontispiece of a late 18th-century chapbook edition of Voltaire's The Extraordinary Tragical Fate of Calas, depicting Jean Calas being broken on the wheel (from Chapbook)
Image 29Chinua Achebe, Buffalo, 2008 (from Novel)
Image 30Harlequin novels (from Romance novel)
Image 31First edition of Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers (1870) (from Novel)

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