Balti state university a. Russo chair of english philology

The Beginning of the Novel 
At the foundation of novel writing was D. Defoe and J. Richardson. Both of them belonged 
to the middle class and expressed in their works middle class interests and attitudes. They also 
wrote about and for women. To a large extent the development of novel is identical with the 
attempt to interest the growing number of female readers by shaping their lives into literature. 
Defoe tried to show not the earlier romances but to create their world as it was populated with 

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people concerned with their practical life. He did not seek readers among the upper classes. He 
wrote for servants and apprentices. 
Richardson however caught the attention of all literate Europe and established a solid and 
enduring literary landscape. His great works are Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740) a story told 
in a series of letters in which a virtuous servant girl eventually wins her master for a husband. 
Another masterpiece of the age was the novel Clarisa (1747 – 48) written by J. Richardson. 
No earlier author had involved his reader fully in the thoughts and emotions of his 
characters nor had any author paid such close attention to the pressures on women. Some Later 
novelists as Fanny Burney (1752 –1840) and Jane Austen would profit from his example. 
Henry Fielding (1707–1754) wrote The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling (1749) under 
the influence of Richardson‟s works. The protagonist became the pattern of a good-natured hero 
of the age: “a young” man of many virtues, generous, high spirited, loyal and courageous but 
impulsive and full of animal spirits. The critics characterized it as a brilliantly constructed plot.
This picturesque tradition was continued by Tobias Smallett (1721 – 1771) with his novels 
Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751), Ferdinand, Count Fathom (1753). In his 
works Smallett depicted the grotesque side of the 18
th
century life, its brutality, coarse practical 
jokes, and strong odors. 
The most original novelist of the period was Laurence Stern (1713 – 1768), a humorist, 
sentimentalist and an author who reminds us that one of the roots of the novels is the word 
“novelty”. 
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1760 –1767) frustrated the readers. The plot 
does not have a logical order; he abandons clock time, interrupting scenes. In fact, it is an 
elaborate joke at the reader‟s expense. Who was not ready for such a change. 
Fielding, Smallett and Stern gave English Literature a gallery of eccentric and original 
characters that illustrate the interest of the age not only in the ideal but also in the individual and 
the unique character.