English literature in the 18th century (enlightenment in england) General Background

The Development of the English Realistic Novel
The development of the novel is one of the great achievements of the English literature. The foundations of early realism in English literature were laid by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. Their novels were of a new type and with a new hero, but they were based on imaginary voyages and adventures supposed to take place far from England. Gradually the readers’ tastes changed. They wanted to find more and more of their own life reflected in literature. These demands were satisfied when the great novels of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollet appeared one after another. They marked a new stage in the development of literature. The greatest merit of these novelists is in their deep sympathy for the common man. The common man is shown in his actual surroundings, which makes him convincing, believable, and true to life. With Fielding the novel had come of age. He had established it in one of its most notable forms, middle-class realism. He had endowed it with a conception of forms, and made it an art not unworthy of comparison with the pictorial art.

Many scholars consider Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela” (1740) to be the first true novel in English. This book is highly moralistic. In contrast, the novels of Henry Fielding and Tobias Smollet are humorous and satiric. Laurence Stern was another leading novelist of the period. With the above-mentioned writers, yet background alone was lacking, and was to remain absent until Walter Scott gave it lavishly in his fictions. Above all, he had less reticence than Richardson, and less than any of the novelists that succeeded him in the nineteenth century.