bookshop, March 2009]]

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century.

Further definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the way reality is created in the works of fiction, the fascination of the character study, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. The individualism of the presentation makes the personal memoir and the autobiography the two closest relatives among the genres of modern histories.

Definition

{| style="float:right;" |- |, young man reading a book c.1680, the format is that of a French period novel.]] |- | spending her afternoon with a book, 1756 – religious and scientific reading has a different iconography.]] |- |, The New Novel (1877), again reading in a relaxed position]] |- | commuter reading a novel, Berlin 2009.]] |}

The fictional narrative, the novel's distinct "literary" prose, specific media requirements (the use of paper and print), a characteristic subject matter that creates both intimacy and a typical epic depth can be seen as features that developed with the Western (and modern) market of fiction. The separation of a field of histories from a field of literary fiction fueled the evolution of these features in the last 400 years.

A fictional narrative

Fictionality and the presentation in a narrative are the two features most commonly invoked to distinguish novels from histories. In a historical perspective they are problematic criteria. Histories were supposed to be narrative projects throughout the early modern period. Their authors could include inventions as long as they were rooted in traditional knowledge or in order to orchestrate a certain passage. Historians would thus invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the other hand, depict the social, political, and personal realities of a place and period with a clarity and detail historians would not dare to explore.

The line between history and novel is eventually drawn between the debates novelists and historians are supposed to address in the West and wherever the Western pattern of debates has been introduced: Novels are supposed to show qualities of literature and art. Histories are by contrast supposed to be written in order to fuel a public debate over historical responsibilities. A novel can hence deal with history. It will be analyzed, however, with a look at the almost timeless value it is supposed to show in the hands of private readers as a work of art.

The critical demand is a source of constant argument: Does the specific novel have these "eternal qualities" of art, this "deeper meaning" an interpretation tries to reveal? The debate itself had positive effects. It allowed critics to cherish fictions that are clearly marked as such. The novel is not a historical forgery, it does not hide the fact that it was made with a certain design. The word novel can appear on book covers and title pages; the artistic effort or the sheer suspense created can find a remark in a preface or on the blurb. Once it is stated that this is a text whose craftsmanship we should acknowledge literary critics will be responsible for the further discussion. The new responsibility (historians were the only qualified critics up into the 1750s) made it possible to publicly disqualify much of the previous fictional production: Both the early 18th-century roman à clef and its fashionable counterpart, the nouvelle historique, had offered narratives with – by and large scandalous – historical implications. Historians had discussed them with a look at facts they had related. The modern literary critic who became responsible for fictions in the 1750s offered a less scandalous debate: A work is "literature", art, if it has a personal narrative, heroes to identify with, fictional inventions, style and suspense – in short anything that might be handled with the rather personal ventures of creativity and artistic freedom. It may relate facts with scandalous accuracy, or distort them; yet one can ignore any such work as worthless if it does not try to be an achievement in the new field of literary works – it has to compete with works of art and invention, not with true histories. The new scandal is if it fails to offer literary merits.

Historians reacted and left much of their own previous "medieval" and "early modern" production to the evaluation of literary critics. New histories discussed public perceptions of the past – the decision that turned them into the perfect platform on which one can question historical liabilities in the West. Fictions, allegedly an essentially personal subject matter, became, on the other hand, a field of materials that call for a public interpretation: they became a field of cultural significance to be explored with a critical and (in the school system) didactic interest in the subjective perceptions both of artists and their readers.

Distinct literary prose

The first so called "romances" had been verse epics in the Romance language of southern France. Novel(la)s as those Geoffrey Chaucer presented in his The Canterbury Tales appeared in verse much later. A number of famous 19th-century fictional narratives such as Lord Byron's Don Juan (1824) and Alexander Pushkin's Yevgeniy Onegin (1833) competed with the moderne prose novels of their time and employed verse. It is hence problematic to call prose a dicisive criterion. Prose did, however, become the standard of the modern novel – thanks to a number of advantages it had over verse once the question of the carrier medium was solved.

Prose is easy to translate and unlike verse pleasant to read in private silence. As rather initimate and informal language prose won the market of European fiction in the 15th century, a time at which books first became widely available, and immediately developed a special style with models both in Greek and Roman histories and the traditions of verse narratives wherever an elevated style was needed. The development of a distinct fictional language was crucial for the genre that did not aim at forging history but at works readers would actually identify and appreciate as fictions.

The is for the early modern period closely connected to the development of elegance in the belles lettres. With the beginning of the 16th century the printed market had created a special demand for books that were neither simply published for the non academic audience nor explicitly scientific literature – but. The belles lettres became this field as a compound of genres including modern history and science in the vernaculars, personal memoirs, present political scandal, fiction and poetry. Prose fiction was in this wider spectrum soon the driving force creating the distinct style as it allowed the artistic experiment and the personal touch of the author who could market his or her style as a fashion. Verse, rhetoric and science were by contrast highly restricted areas. Fictional prose remained close to everyday language, to the private letter, to the art of "gallant" conversation, to the personal memoir and travelogue.

18th-century authors eventually criticized the French ideals of elegance the belles lettres had promoted. A less aristocratic style of English reformed novels became the ideal in the 1740s. The requirements of style changed again in the 1760s when prose fiction became part of the newly formed literary production. The more normal it became to open novels with a simple statement of their fictionality (for example by labelling them as "a novel"), the less interesting it became to imitate true histories with an additional touch of style. Novels of the 1760s such as Sterne's Tristram Shandy began to explore prose fiction as an experimental field. Novels of the ensuing romantic period played with the fragment and open-endedness. Modern late 19th century and early 20th century fiction continued the deconstruction attacking the clear author-reader communication and developing models of texts to be evaluated as such. Modern literary criticism acted in the experimental field as a constant provider of historical models. Authors who write fiction gain critical attention as soon as they search a position in future histories of literature, whether as innovators or traditionalists. The situation is – in a historical perspective – new: An awareness of traditions has only grown after the publication of Huet's Treatise on the Origin of Romances (1670). It has reached the public only with greater impact since the 1830s.

Media requirements: Paper and print

The evolution of prose fiction required cheap carrier media. Unlike verse, prose can hardly be remembered with precision. Oral traditions had helped prose narrators with stock narrative patterns as employed in fairy tales and with complex plot structures, whose point they could only reach if they told the story correctly (the novels of Boccaccio and Chaucer share this mode of construction with modern jokes, the shortest form of prose narratives still circulating in oral traditions).

Extended prose fictions needed paper to preserve their complex compositions. Parchment had been available before the 1450s, but remained too expensive to be used for histories one would read as a private diversion. Parchment was used for prestigious and presentable volumes of verse epics their owners would have recited on festive occasions (see the Troilus and Criseyde illustration below). Prose was otherwise the language of scientific books. Parchments would in their case be bought by libraries. The situation changed in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries when prose legends became fashionable among the female urban elite. The fact that the new audience would read these books again and again for inspirational purposes legitimated the use of parchment in the private context.

The availability of paper as a carrier medium changed the situation for prose fiction. Paper allowed the production of cheap books one would not necessarily read twice, books one would buy exclusively for one's private diversion. The modern novel developed with the new carrier medium in Europe in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries. The arrival of the printed book pushed the generic development as it created a special tension between the privacy of the reading act and the publicity of the reading material that was sold in larger editions. The formats duodecimo and octavo (or small quarto in the case of chapbooks) immediately created books one could read privately at home or in public without the support of a table. To read novels in coffee houses or on journeys became part of the early modern reading culture. The reader who immerses him- or herself in the novel with the wish to stay undisturbed (or to be disturbed only with a look at his or her present reading) is here an early modern precursor of the modern commuter reading a novel or putting on head phones with the intention to stay private in the public. A special content matter immediately explored the new reading situations.

Special content: The novel's intricate intimacy

Whether in 11th-century Japan or 15th-century Europe, prose fiction tended to develop intimate reading situations. Verse epics had been recited to selected audiences (see the Troilus and Criseyde illustration below), a reception that had already allowed a greater intimacy than the performance of plays in theatres. The late medieval commercial manuscript production created a market of private books, yet it still required the customer to contact the professional copyist with the book he or she wanted to have copied (see the Melusine illustration ) – a situation that again restricted the development of more private reading experiences. The invention of the printing press anonymised the bookseller-text-reader constellation – the situation was especially interesting for prose fiction, a subject matter that remained publicly undiscussed almost throughout the early modern period. Booksellers and readers could pretend far into the 18th century not to know more about the particular title the new market of printed books provided. If one wanted to know what others read in novels one had to read them oneself. Prose fiction became in this situation the medium of open secrets, rumours, private and public gossip, a private, unscientific and irrelevant reading matter, yet one of public relevance as one could openly see that the book one was reading had reached the public as part of a larger edition.

Individualistic fashions, personal views, intimate feelings, secret anxieties, "conduct" and "gallantry" spread with novels. Love became the typical field of experience romances and novels would focus on, as Huet noted in his early definition: "I call them Fictions, to discriminate them from True Histories; and I add, of Love Adventures, because Love ought to be the Principal Subject of Romance" Satirical fictions widened the range of subject matter in the 17th and 18th centuries. The reader is invited to personally identify with the novel's characters (whilst historians are supposed to aim at neutrality and a public view on whatever they discuss).

The reviewing of fiction changed the situation for the fictional work in the course of the 18th century. It created a public discussion about what people were actually reading in novels. It had at the same moment the potential to divide the market into a sphere to be discussed and a low production critics would only hint at. The subcultures of trivial fiction and of genres to be sold under the counter with pornography as its most influential field followed the arrival of literary criticism in the 1740s and 1750s.

Length and the epic depiction of life

The requirement of length is contested – in English with greater ferocity than in other languages. It rests on the consensus that the novel is today the longest genre of narrative prose, followed by the novella and the short story. The sequence has been unstable: 17th-century critics had handled the romance as the epic length performance and privileged the novel as its short rival.

The question how long a novel has to be – in order to be more than a novella – is of practical importance as most of the literary awards have developed a ranking system in which length is also a criterion of importance. The Booker Prize has thus aroused a serious debate with its 2007 listing of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. Critics immediately stated that McEwan had at best written a novella.

The requirement of length has been traditionally connected with the notion that epic length performances try to cope with the "totality of life". The novella is by contrast focused on a point, the short story on a situation whose full dimensions the reader has to grasp in a complex process of interpretation.

History

Etymology

The present English (and Spanish) 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". Most European languages have preserved the term "romance" (as in French and German "Roman", and in Portuguese "Romance") for extended narratives.

The English and Spanish decisions came with the 17th-century fashion of shorter exemplary histories. See the chapters "Petites histoires" or "novels", 1600–1740 and The words "novel" and "romance" in the following.

Antecedents around the world

writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction]] A significant number of extended fictional prose works predate the novel, and have been cited as its antecedents. While these anticipate the novel in form and, to some extent, in substance, the early European novelists were unaware of most of these works; instead they were influenced by novellas and verse epics.

Early works of extended fictional prose include the 6th/7th-century Daśakumāracarita by Daṇḍin, the 7th-century Kadambari by Banabhatta, the 11th-century Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, the 12th-century Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (or Philosophus Autodidactus, the 17th-century Latin title) by Ibn Tufail, the 13th-century Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis, and the 14th-century Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong.

Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji (1010) shows essentially all the qualities for which works such as Marie de La Fayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678) have been praised: individuality of perception, an interest in character development and psychological observation. Parallel European developments did not occur for centuries, and awaited the time when the availability of paper allowed similar opportunities for composition and reception, allowing explorations of individualistic subject matter. By contrast, Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Ibn al-Nafis' Theologus Autodidactus are works of didactic philosophy and theology rather than private reading pleasure in the style of popular Western novels. In this sense, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan would be considered an early example of a philosophical novel, while Theologus Autodidactus would be considered an early theological novel. Hayy ibn Yaqdhan is also likely to have influenced Daniel Defoe with its story of a human outcast surviving on an island (the work was available in a new edition shortly before Defoe began his composition).

Western traditions of the modern novel reach back into the field of verse epics, though again not in an unbroken tradition. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (1300–1000 BC), Indian epics such as the Ramayana (400 BCE and 200 CE) and Mahabharata (4th century BC) were as unknown in early modern Europe as the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf (c. 750–1000 rediscovered in the late 18th century and early 19th century).

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (9th or 8th century BC), Virgil's Aeneid (29–19 BC) were read by Western scholars since the Middle Ages. At the beginning of the 18th century, modern French prose translations brought Homer to a wider public, who accepted them as forerunners of the modern novel. Ancient prose narratives included a didactic strand with Plato's dialogs, a satirical with Petronius' Satyricon, the incredible stories of Lucian of Samosata, and Lucius Apuleius' proto-picaresque The Golden Ass and a heroic production with the romances of Heliodorus and Longus.

It is less easy to define the traditions of short fictions that led to the medieval novella. Jokes would fall into the broad history of the "exemplary story" that gave rise to the more complex forms of novelistic story telling. The Bible is filled with similes and stories to be interpreted. Fiction is, as Pierre Daniel Huet noted in his Traitté de l'origine des romans in 1670, a rather universal phenomenon, and at the same moment one that lacks a single cause.

The problem of roots is matched by a problem of branches: the inventions of paper and movable type helped isolated genres come together into a single market of exchange and awareness. The first languages of this new market were Spanish, French, German, Dutch and English. The rise of the United States, Russia, Scandinavia and Latin America broadened the spectrum in the 19th century. A later wave of new literatures brought forth Asian and African novelists. The novel has become a global medium of national awareness, surrounded and encouraged in each country by a complex of literary criticism and literary awards. The relatively late emergence of the Latin American or African novel does not necessarily indicate lagging cultural progress leading only at a late date to the individuality that brought forth the modern novel: it may just as easily reflect late arrival of such necessary material factors as print, paper, and a marketplace.

The medieval romance and its rivals of shorter works

Romances, 1000–1500

reciting Troilus and Criseyde: early 15th-century manuscript of the work at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge]] The European tradition of the novel as the genre of extended prose fiction is rooted in the tradition of medieval "romances". Even today, most European languages make that clear by using the word roman roughly the way that English uses the word novel, which claims roots in the Italian novella. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (1380–87) is a late example of this European fashion.

The subject matter which was to become the central theme of the genre in the 16th and 17th centuries was initially a branch of a broader genre. Arthurian histories became a fashion in the late 12th century thanks to their ability to glorify the northern European feudal system as an independent cultural achievement. The works of Chrétien de Troyes set an example, in that his plot construction subjected the northern European epic traditions to ancient Greek aesthetics. The typical Arthurian romance would focus on a single hero and lead him into a double course of episodes in which he would prove both his prowess as an independent knight and his readiness to function as a perfect courtier under King Arthur. The model invited religious redefinitions with the quest and the adventure as basic plot elements: the quest was a mission the knight would accept as his personal task and problem. Adventures (from Latin advenire "coming towards you") were tests sent by God to the knight on the journey, whose course he (the knight) would no longer try to control. The plot framework survived into the world of modern Hollywood movies which still unite, separate and reunite lovers in the course of adventures designed to prove their love and value. Variations kept the genre alive: unexpected and peculiar adventures surprised the audience in romances like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1380). Satirical parodies of knight errantry (and contemporary politics) appeared with works such as Heinrich Wittenwiler's Ring (c. 1410).

The shift from verse to prose dates from the early 13th century. The Prose Lancelot or Vulgate Cycle includes passages of that period. The collection indirectly lead to Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur compilation of the early 1470s.

Several factors made prose increasingly attractive: this "low" style was less prone to potentially annoying exaggerations; it linked the popular plots to the field of serious histories traditionally composed in prose (compilations such as Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur claimed to collect historical sources for the sole purpose of instruction and national edification). Prose had an additional advantage for translators, who could go directly for meaning, where verse had to be translated by people skilled as poets in the target language. And prose survived language changes: developments such as the Great vowel shift changed almost all the European languages during the 14th and 15th centuries. Copyists of prose had an easy job to deal with these shifts while those who copied verses saw that rhymes had broken and syllables got lost in almost every second line.

Prose became the medium of the urban commercial book market in the 15th century. Monasteries sold edifying collections of saints' and virgins' lives composed in prose. The customers were mostly women (the interiors of many of the 14th- and 15th-century paintings of the annunciation show how far books had spread into the urban households that painters usually depicted as the blessed virgin's bourgeois environment.) Prose became in this environment the medium of silent and private reading. It spread with the commercial book market that began to provide such reading materials even before the arrival of the first commercial printed histories in the 1470s.

The tradition of the novella, 1200–1600

.]] The term novel refers back to the production of short stories that remained part of a European oral culture of storytelling into the late 19th century. Fairy tales, jokes, little funny stories designed to make a point in a conversation, the exemplum a priest would insert in a sermon belong into this tradition. Written collections of such stories circulated in a wide range of products from practical compilations of examples designed for the use of clerics to such poetic cycles as Boccaccio's Decameron (1354) and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1386–1400).

The early modern genre conflict between "novels" and "romances" can be traced back to the 14th-century cycles. The standard scheme of stories the author claimed to have heard in a round of narrators promised variety of subject matter and it led to clashes of genres. Short romances appeared within the frame tales side by side with stories of the rivalling lower genres such as the fabliaux. Individual story tellers would openly defend their tastes in a debate that grew into a metafictional consideration.

The cycles themselves showed advantages over the production of rival extended epic-length romances. Romances presupposed a consensus in questions of style and heroism. The cycles shifted the problem of how fictions were to be justified onto the level of the individual storytellers: onto a level the author, Chaucer or Boccaccio, would see as out of his control. The narrators had, so Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, offered these stories to make certain points in a lively conversation he had only chronicled. They attacked each other if they felt the stories of their opponents had missed their points. A competition among the genres developed. If one believes the medieval collections, differing tastes of people with different social statuses were decisive; the different professions fought a battle over precedent with satirical plots designed to ridicule individuals of the opposing trades. A cycle bound rival stories together and it offered the easiest way to keep a critical distance. The pluralistic discourse created here eventually developed into the 17th- and 18th-century debate of fiction and its genres.

Much of this original conception of the genre is still alive whenever a short joke is told to make a certain humorous point in everyday conversation. The longer exploits left the sphere of oral traditions with the arrival of the printing press. The book eventually replaced the story teller and introduced the preface and the dedication as the paratexts in which the authors would continue the metafictional debate over the advantages of genres and the reasons why one published and read fictional stories.

Before literature: The early market of printed books, 1470–1720

looked back to the market of manuscripts.]] Looking back to the scope of early modern histories, mentalities seem to differ. The Enlightenment seems to separate the 21st-century observer from early modern authors and readers of histories and fictions. The grossest improbabilities pervade many historical accounts found in the early modern print market. William Caxton's 1485 edition of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1471) was sold as a true history, though the story unfolded in a series of magical incidents and historical improbabilities. Witchcraft pervaded the medieval romance, which no one read as "romance" as long as it claimed to be a central text of Great Britain's national memory. Sir John Mandeville's Voyages, written in the 14th century, circulated in printed editions throughout the 18th century, and was filled with natural wonders like the one-footed Ethiopians who use their extremity as an umbrella against the desert sun – again without becoming the subject of critical historical debates. Both works eventually came to be viewed as works of literature, fiction. The realm of history grew around 1700 into a field of comparatively sober argumentative rather than narrative projects.

One can interpret this development as a sign of gradual enlightenment. It stands at the same moment for a new arrangement of discourses the Western nations established beginning with the 1660s. History became in the Western world a secular platform on which all parties, religions, and institutions agree to settle questions of unresolved responsibilities. Historical commissions such as the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission are temporarily established whenever conflicts call for historical decisions. Debates of state and religion had a comparable importance until the beginning of the 18th century. A new positioning of the sciences and a general interest of the 19th-century nation states in controllable and pluralistic secular debates stand behind the process that found its breakthrough with the American and the French revolutions and the 19th-century unification of Germany.

The transformation of history from a narrative project designed to instruct and to delight into a platform of open controversies is the one larger process which redefined the place of prose fiction since the Middle Ages. The creation of "literature" as a compound of poetry and fiction is the other. The modern nations won with literature a second field of essentially pluralistic controversies in which the interpretation and collective appreciation of texts gained a new and wider importance.

Two major incidents fuelled the separation of historical and fictional literature in the 16th and 17th centuries. The invention of printing immediately created a new market of comparatively cheap entertainment and knowledge – the market of chapbooks. The more elegant production 17th- and 18th-century authors would propagate as the belles lettres – a market that would be neither low nor academic – defined its ideals of style in the course of the 17th century. It became the wider sphere in which the modern ensemble of "literary genres" of poetry and fiction gained greater cohesion in late 18th century. The second major development is fixed to a single title: The Spanish Amadis de Gaula, by García Montalvo became the first best-seller of modern fiction – a title one would soon be reluctant to accept as part of the elegant belles lettres. The Amadis eventually became the archetypical "romance" against which the modern novel unfolded its successful wider pattern of genres in the 17th century.

Trivializations: Chapbooks, 1470–1800

The invention of printing subjected the existing field of histories – whether allegedly true, romantic or novel – to a process of trivialization and commercialization. Romances had circulated in lavishly ornamented manuscripts to be read out to audiences. The printed book allowed a comparatively inexpensive alternative for the special purpose of silent reading. Abridgements of ancient historians, popular medieval histories of knights, stories of comical heroes, religious legends and collections of jests and fables were the principal historical subject matter. Offering suspense and stories the audience could accept as allegedly true, even if they were fantastic and unlikely, the new books reached the households of urban citizens and of country merchants who visited the cities as traders.

edition of The Honour of Chivalry, first published in 1598.]] Literacy spread among the urban populations of Europe due to a number of factors: Women of wealthier households had learned to read in the 14th and 15th centuries and had become customers of religious devotion. The Protestant Reformation enkindled propaganda and press wars that lasted into the 18th century. Broadsheets and newspapers became the new media of public information. The early modern customers would not necessarily be able to write, yet even writing skills spread among apprentices and women of the middle classes. Business owners were forced to adopt methods of written book-keeping and accounting. The personal letter became a favourite medium of communication among 17th-century men and women as many Dutch period paintings show. The prefaces, the escapist subject matter, and a number of satires on the early consumption of fiction show that cheap histories were especially popular among apprentices and younger urban readers of both sexes. Norris' and Bettesworth's 1719 edition of The Seven Famous Champions of Christendom – itself a mixture of legend and romance – ended with a look on the entire spectrum of books the publishers would provide in their shops on London Bridge, a famous location where those who left the city provided themselves with reading materials:

At the afore-mentioned Place, all Country Chapmen may be furnished with all Sorts of Bibles, Commonprayers, Testaments, Psalters, Primers and Horn-books; Likewise all Sorts of three Sheets Histories, Penny Histories, and Sermons; and Choice of new and old Ballads, at reasonable Rates.

Gargantua (1537).]] The new market was disregarded by scholars. The texts were offered with promises of great erudition – to an audience that would not know to distinguish between erudition and the misleading advertisement. The subject matter was extremely conservative. The bestsellers of this market – books like Till Eulenspiegel, The Seven Wise Masters, Don Belianis of Greece, Dr. Faustus, The London Prentice, or Sir John Mandeville's Voyages – went through innumerable editions between 1500 and 1800. People bought these books because though they were everything but modern and fashionable; one wanted to have them, because they were the books everyone had heard of, books of an eternal value to be chosen if one was not too sure about one's abilities to judge. The prefaces exploited these insecurities praising the solid value of the old and well known titles.

The design of these books deteriorated. The texts were copied without much editorship. Standard woodcut illustrations were repeated, often even within a single book, wherever the plot allowed such repetition. The illustrations began to show peculiar style mixes as the printer's stocks grew: Early 18th-century editions of 16th-century titles would mix woodcuts of 16th-century knights in armor with equally crude depictions 18th-century courtiers wearing wigs.

The early modern market divide that created a field of low chapbooks and an alternative market segment of expensive fashionable, elegant belles lettres can be traced back into the 1530s and 1540s. The Amadis and Rablais' Gargantua and Pantagruel were the most important publications that lead into this divide – both books that specifically addressed the new customers of popular histories. The Amadis was a multi volume fictional history of style, so the advertisements, and aroused a debate of style and elegance as it fanned the first reading craze on the market of printed fiction. Gargantua and Pantagruel had the design of the modern popular history only to satirize its stylistic achievements. The ensuing debate created a gap between "truly elegant" fictions and the conservative bulk of chapbooks. The market divide became especially visible with books that appeared on both markets in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries: The low market eventually included abridgments of classy books from Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605/1615) to the mutilations of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), which infuriated the author with their claim to offer the entire plot without the tedious reflections for but half the price.

The cheap abridgments openly addressed an audience that neither had the money nor the courage to buy books with engravings and fine print. The prefaces of the abridgements promised shorter sentences, more action and less reflection, and the title for half the money. The gradual differentiation between fact and fiction that affected the market of the belles lettres in the 17th and 18th centuries barely touched the low market. One could wonder whether the apprentices and peasants who read such books cared about the status King Arthur, St. George or Julius Caesar had in the historian's eye. William Caxton's preface to Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485) set the tone that would allow Sir John Mandeville's Voyages of the 1360s to continue to be published as a true account of Eastern wonders until the end of the 18th century.

Heroic romances of style and fashion, 1530–1720

, Spanish edition of 1533]] By the 1550s there existed a section of literature (scientific books) addressing the academic audience and a second market of books for the wider audience. The popular second market developed its own differentiation of class and style. Whilst the lowest strata of chapbooks created an extremely conservative market its antagonist the elegant "belles lettres" showed a particular design aiming at educated readers of both sexes, though not necessarily at academics. The very term "belles lettres" spoke of the ambition to leave the field of low books and to reach the realm of the sciences, "literature", "les lettres". Polite literature, galante Wissenschaften (that is sciences addressing both sexes and all readers of taste) were the English and German terminological equivalents. The use of a French loan word belles lettres marked the international aspect of the development. The new market segment comprised poetry, memoirs, modern politics, books of fashion, journals, and such. Autobiographical memoirs, personal journals and prose fiction set the trend in the modern field as the genres that authors could most freely use for experiments of style and personal expression.

, Artamene (1654)]] The evolution of prose fiction needed the elegant market, a market of changing styles and fashions, and it found its central critical debate with the publication of the Amadis de Gaula in the 1530s. Two questions moved into the centre of the debate as Spanish, French and German translations and imitations flooded the European market. The first was a question of style and fashion: the Amadis had moved back into the Arthurian Middle Ages, into a world of quests, knights and adventures, though it had turned its princes and princesses into paragons of style and elegance. Was this what one had to expect of modern prose fiction? The second problem was connected with the unprecedented public reaction: the Amadis became the object of a widespread reading craze. Could a market of style and distinguished taste allow such a development?

By 1600 the Amadis had become the detested epitome of the modern romance. A search for alternative subject matters had begun. The biographies of Greek and Roman historians became the most important source here. Heliodorus' romances were to be followed in matters of style and composition, whilst the heroes turned from knights to princes and princesses acting now in ancient courts. The standard plot of adventures gave way to a new plot of love facing intrigues, attacks, rivalry and adversity. A new art of character observation unfolded.

The works that gained the greatest fame – Honoré d'Urfé's L'Astrée (1607–27), John Barclay's Argenis (1625–26), Madeleine de Scudéry"s ‚Clelie or Anton Ulrich von Braunschweig's Römischer Octavia (Octavia the Roman, 1679–1714) – were esteemed both as explorations of the ancient world and as works one would read with an interest in modern life. They encapsulated present histories clad in ancient costumes and dove into the realm of the roman à clef, the novel readers would decipher with a key that betrayed who was who within this fictional world. The present fashions of courtly conduct could in the event be found nowhere in such perfection as in these seemingly historical romances. Readers used them as models for their own elegant compliments, letters, and speeches.

The genre had much in common with the production of French and Italian operas in the same period. It found trivializations with a special brand of escapist "Asian" Romances which led into the ancient empires of Assyria, Persia, India. The latter were particularly fashionable among urban female French and German readers of the younger generation, who would dream of sharing the escapes of princesses from all sorts of adversities. The individual European markets reacted differently on these fashions. The craving had a particularly short life in England where it began in the 1650s only to end in the 1670s, as these romantic plots fell out of fashion.

Satirical romances, 1500–1780

, The English Rogue (1665)]] Stories of witty cheats were an integral part of the European novella with its tradition of fabliaux. Several collections knitted such stories to individual heroes who developed personal and national features. Germany's Till Eulenspiegel (1510) was the hero of chapbooks in and outside Germany. The Spanish Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) represented a transition from a collection of episodes towards the story of the life of a central character, the hero of the work. Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus Teutsch (1666–1668) took a further step along this path, as its hero experienced recent world history, in this case the history of the Thirty Years' War that had devastated Germany. Richard Head's The English Rogue (1665) is rooted in this tradition (the English preface mentions the precedents; the German translation that appeared in 1672 sold the book as an English equivalent of the German Simplicissimus). The tradition that developed with these titles focused on a hero and his life. The adventures led to satirical encounters with the real world with the hero either becoming the pitiable victim or the rogue who exploited the vices of those he met.

A second tradition of satirical romances can be traced back to Heinrich Wittenwiler's Ring (c. 1410) and to François Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564). It was rather designed to parody and satirize heroic romances, and did this mostly by dragging them into the low realm of the burlesque. Cervantes' Don Quixote (1606/1615) modified the satire of romances: its hero lost contact with reality by reading too many romances in the Amadisian tradition.

Both branches of satirical production seem to have addressed a predominantly male audience (women are despicable victims in titles like Head's The English Rogue). They found the appreciation of critics as long as they revealed the weaknesses of the Amadis. The critics otherwise deplored that the satires could not offer alternatives. Other important works of the tradition are Paul Scarron's Roman Comique (1651–57) with its explicit discussions of the market of fictions, the anonymous French Rozelli with its satire on Europe's religions, Alain-René Lesage's Gil Blas (1715–1735), Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749), and Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist (1773, printed posthumously in 1796).

"Petites histoires" or "novels", 1600–1740

, Novelas Exemplares (1613)]] , Incognita (1692)]] The term novel – today in a twisted history (see ) connected with the appearance of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) – has been present on the market since the 16th century. William Painter's Palace of Pleasure well furnished with pleasaunt Histories and excellent Novelles (1566) was the first English title to use it. Compared with "romances", "novelles", "novellas" or "novels" (all these words meant the same, "novel" became the standard term in the 1650s) had to be short. They had to give up all aspirations on grandeur, heroism and the style romantic heroes and their actions required. "Romances" focused on lonely heroes and their adventures, "novels" on revealing incidents that could serve as examples for moral maxims. The titles of "romances" put their respective heroes' and heroines' names front and centre: "Artamene", "Clelie" were the heroes of "heroic romances". "Satirical romances" did the same with their lower class protagonists. The additional "Adventures of" would later emphasize the focus on acts of heroism. The titles of "novels" preferred a two part formula "[...] or [...]" in order to state the value of the incident related. William Congreve's Incognita or Love and Duty Reconcil'd (1692) was typical in this respect. The protagonists of "novels" were actors in a plot, in an intrigue, and it was the plot that gave the example and taught the vital lessons. These protagonists could be average human beings without any special signs of grandeur, neither comical nor imitable but of the same nature as their readers; they would by and large show problematic character traits. Unlike romances, the protagonists were not role models: instead, the surprising results of their actions taught the lessons.

The rise of the "novel" as the major alternative to the antiquated "romance" began with the publication of Cervantes Novelas Exemplares (1613). It unfolded with Scarron's Roman Comique, whose heroes noted a rivalry of French "romances" and the new Spanish genre. France had to find, Scarron wrote at the time, its own brand of short stories.

Late 17th-century critics looked back onto the history of prose fiction proud of the generic shift towards the modern novel/novella. A wave of "petites histoires" or "nouvelles historiques" had replaced the old romances. The first perfect works in French were those of Scarron and Madame de La Fayette's "Spanish history" Zayde (1670). The development finally led to her Princesse de Clèves (1678), the first novel with what would become characteristic French subject matter (Marie de LaFayette's authorship remained a secret, though, over the next decades).

Europe witnessed the generic shift with the titles Dutch francophone publishers supplied on the international market. English publishers exploited the novel/romance controversy in the 1670s and 1680s. The word "novel" began to replace the word "romance" on title pages in the 1680s. Contemporary critics listed the advantages of the new genre: brevity, a lack of ambition to produce epic poetry in prose. The style was fresh and plain; the focus was on modern life and on heroes who were neither good nor bad. One learned through their actions, not by imitating them. The novel's potential to become the medium of urban gossip and scandal fuelled the rise of the novel/novella. The authors of modern journalistic gossip spiced their works with short anonymous histories. The stories were offered as allegedly true recent histories, not for the sake of scandal but strictly for the moral lessons they gave. To prove this, one would read fictionalized names (and read the true names in separate keys). The Mercure Gallant set the fashion in the 1670s. Collections of letters and memoirs appeared, and were filled with the intriguing new subject matter. The epistolary novel grew on this market and found its first full blown example of scandalous fiction with Aphra Behn's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684/ 1685/ 1687).

The development did not lead to Robinson Crusoe – a work that was almost provocatively (both in 1719 when it appeared and still in the 1760s) a new "romance", thanks to its exotic setting and thanks to its singular hero offering a story of survival in isolation. Crusoe lacked almost all the amenities of the new "novels": wit, a fast narration evolving around a group of young fashionable urban heroes and their intrigues, a scandalous moral, gallant talk to be imitated and brevity and conciseness of the plot. The development did, however, lead to Eliza Haywood's epic length "novel" Love in Excess (1719/20) and to Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1741), essentially still a novel with its typical two part title: naming the story and promising its value as an example. It led to a production of classics of the intriguing production and to a reform movement in the 1740s.

Dubious and scandalous histories, 1660–1720

The entire market of early modern fiction remained part of the wider production of (potentially dubious) histories. A market of "literature" in the modern sense of the word, a market of fiction and poetry, did not exist. "History and politicks" was the rubric early 18th-century Term Catalogues had in stock for the entire production of pamphlets, memoirs, travel literature, political analysis, serious histories, romances and novels.

That fictional histories could share the same space with academic histories and modern journalism had been criticized by historians since the end of the Middle Ages: fictions were "lies" and therefore hardly justifiable at all. The climate had, however, changed, in the 1670s. Paradoxically, the same historians who pleaded for a new era of academic research also pleaded for fiction to stay within the field of histories. The authors who advocated Pyrrhonism, scepticism as a historical discipline, did not demand that fictions change. Instead, they demanded that historians should step from the old project of historical narratives to a new project of critical analysis and discussion of sources. Pierre Bayle exemplified this with all the articles of his Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697) and with his statements on the legitimacy of fictions, especially those of the modern political market.

The new novels, romances and dubious histories, the quasi historical and yet immensely readable works of the Madame d'Aulnoy, César Vichard de Saint-Réal, Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras, and Anne-Marguerite Petit du Noyer, were, according to the modern advocates of the free press, not only embedded in the field of veritable critical histories: they had an important function to fulfill in that field. In a time when factuality was not a sufficient defence against a libel suit, the romantic lay out allowed the publication of histories that could not risk an unambiguous assertion of their truth. The question was not whether one should separate the markets of true and fictional histories from each other but whether one would be able to establish critical discourses to evaluate all the interesting production.

The market of the late 17th century and early 18th century employed a simple pattern of options of how fictions could both be part of the historical production and reach out into the sphere of true histories. The fringes of this pattern flourished as cheap excuses. They allowed it authors to claim they had published fiction, not truth, if they ever faced outright allegations of libel:

's Telemachus (London: E. Curll, 1715) and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (London: W. Taylor, 1719).]] Prefaces and title pages of 17th- and early 18th-century fiction acknowledged this pattern: histories could claim to be romances, but threaten to relate true events, as in the roman à clef. Other works could, conversely, claim to be factual histories, yet earn the suspicion that they were wholly invented. A further differentiation was made between private and public history: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was, within this pattern, neither "romance" nor "novel". It smelled – with its title page alluding to Fénelon's Telemachus (1699/1700) – of romance, whilst the preface stated that one (most certainly) read a true private history:

IF ever the Story of any private Man's Adventures in the World were worth making Pvblick, and were acceptable when Publish'd, the Editor of this Account thinks this will be so.     ''The Wonders of this Man's Life exceed all that (he thinks) is to be found extant; the Life of one Man being scarce capable of a greater Variety.     The Story is told with Modesty, with Seriousness, and with a religious Application of Events to the Uses to which wise Men always ap[p]ly them (viz.) to the Instruction of others by this Example, and to justify and honor the Wisdom of Providence in all the Variety of our Circumstances, let them happen how they will.     The Editor believes the thing to be a just History of Fact; neither is there any Appearance of Fiction in it: And however thinks, because all such things are dispatch'd, that the Improvement of it, as well as the Diversion, as to the Instruction of the Reader, will be the same; and as such he thinks, without farther Compliment to the World, he does them a great Service in the Publication.

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe did not use the twilight to spread political insinuations; the hardly credible account did, however, offer the alternative of a deeper allegorical reading. Other authors proved the practical value of the pattern. Delarivier Manley–under interrogation after the publication of her scandalous Atalantis (1709)–replied that she had written a work of sheer romance, a fairy tale located on the famous fictional island. If the ruling Whigs wanted to prove that all her stories matched a scandalous truth of their own actions, they might venture a libel case. The authoress was released and continued her insinuations with three more volumes of proclaimed romance published during the next two years.

Whilst journalists continued to defend the dubious production (relying on the enlightened audience's ability to read with the necessary grain of skepticism if not with amusement), the defenders of public morals demanded an entirely new organization of the market, one that isolated fiction. This was the market the 18th century was to establish.

From dubious history to literature: The 18th-century market reform

{| style="float:right;" | data. Years of political turmoil produced higher numbers of controversial short tracts.]] data. The poetical and fictional production does not have a unified place yet.]] classification of "fiction" and have to be seen as arbitrary identifications of "fictions". Searching for dubious histories and works written in what is today perceived as the literary style of novels one is likely to arrive at higher numbers.]] |}

The Rise of the Novel

The 18th-century rise of the novel is a compound of several stories.

One is a story of statistics. English readers of the late 17th century and early 18th century were offered a total of some 2,000 to 3,000 titles per year. The numbers had risen dramatically after the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641. The simple title count gives, however, a distorted picture as it places theological and political pamphlets of short term effect on the same level with editions of books printed to sell over several years. Statistics of the French and German markets have their own distortions: French numbers are comparatively higher due to the fact that Dutch publishers (re-)printed French books for the international market. French was Europe's lingua franca and the language of international politics and fashions. Germany's book trade was large but divided between Protestant and Catholic states. The former had arranged for a wider exchange at Leipzig's fairs. The academic production in Latin was comparatively large on the continent due to the importance continental universities had gained as providers of careers.

Literature in the modern sense was of marginal importance all over Europe until the end of the 18th century. In the Western markets some two to five percent of the total production fell into the categories of poetry and dubious or elegant historical works that were later united under the new heading literature. To give the numbers for the English production: The fictional output remained here at 20 to 60 titles per year in the beginning of the 18th century depending on how one accounts for the wider market of histories. French, German and Dutch statistics are comparable. The eastern and southern European neighbors largely subscribed to the international market.

The Western European output of literature in the modern sense rose significantly in the course of the 18th century; the growth rates stabilised in the 1740s. A change in the public appreciation supported that growth and was reflected by the growing media coverage of new works.

Cultural status and place

Fiction was no longer a predominantly aristocratic entertainment around 1700. The Provençal 12th-century romances and their imitations had already attracted urban connoisseurs who had had the financial means to commission bigger manuscripts in the 14th and 15th centuries. Printed books had soon gained the power to reach readers of almost all classes, the reading habits differed. To follow fashions remained a privilege. Spain was a trendsetter into the 1630s; French authors superseded Cervantes, de Quevedo, and Alemán in the 1640s. As Huet was to note in 1670, the change was one of manners. The new French works taught a new, on the surface freer, gallant exchange between the sexes as the essence of life at the French court. Aristocratic and bourgeois customers sought distinctly French authors to offer the authentic style of conversations in the 1660s.

The situation changed again from 1660s into the 1690s: the French market split. Dutch publishers began to sell works by French authors, published out of the reach of French censors. The publishing houses of The Hague and Amsterdam also pirated the entire Parisian production of fashionable books and thus created a new market of political and scandalous fictions and European fashions. Composers Corelli and Vivaldi sent their sheet music from Italy to Étienne Roger in Amsterdam in order to reach a wider European audience. The same Roger published Renneville's L'inquisition Françoise (1715). In the year of its publication, the latter work was available both in an English version published in London and a German version published in Nuremberg. Books of the period boasted of their fame on the international market and of the existence of intermediate translations. "Written originally in Italian and translated from the third edition of the French" one read in imitation of this craze on title page of Manley's New Atalantis in 1709. A market of European rather than French fashions had arrived in the early 18th century.

By the 1680s the fashionable political European production had inspired a second wave of private scandalous publications and generated new productions of local importance. Women authors reported on politics and on their private love affairs in The Hague and in London. German students imitated them and used the relative anonymity they enjoyed in far smaller towns like Jena, Halle and Leipzig, to boast of their private amours in fiction. The market of the metropolis London, the anonymous international market of the Netherlands, the urban markets of Hamburg and Leipzig generated new public spheres. Once private individuals – students of university towns and daughters of London's upper class posing on the title pages anonymously under announcements like "Written by a Young Lady" – began to use the novel as platform on which they could openly reevaluate their questionable reputations, the public began to call for a reformation of manners.

The reform became the main goal of the second generation of 18th-century novelists who, by the mid-century, openly welcomed the change of climate that had first been promoted in journals such as The Spectator (No. 10 of The Spectator had stated the aim "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality… to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses"). Constructive criticism of novels had until then hardly left the world of fiction. The first treatise on the history of the novel had appeared as a preface to a novel, Marie de La Fayette's Zayde (1670). "Literary journals" devoted to the sciences could not easily switch to devote themselves to belles lettres. A distinct secondary discourse developed with a wave of entertaining new journals like The Spectator and The Tatler at the beginning of the century. New "literary journals" like Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Briefe, die neuste Literatur betreffend (1758) added to this production in the middle of the century with the offer of new, scientific reviews of art and fiction. By the 1780s, critical public reception constituted a new marketing platform for fiction, and authors and publishers recognized it as such. One could write to satisfy the old market or one could address the authors of secondary criticism and gain an audience through their discussions. It would take yet another generation for the novel to arrive in the curricula of school and university education. By the end of the 18th century, the public perception of the place of a particular novel was no longer supplied simply by social status and fashionable geographical provenance, but by critical media attention.

Realism and art

French Inquisition (1715), the author's arrest.]] The term "literary realism" is regularly applied to 19th-century fiction. The novels Defoe, Richardson and Fielding wrote between 1719 and the 1750s can be read as precursors. Research of the last decades has, however, contested views that it was Robinson Crusoe's realism that ended the sway of "French baroque romances".

Madeleine de Scudéry's "romances" had not been completely unrealistic; Keys had circulated with them. They had left the market nonetheless in the 1670s, defeated by the more realistic "novels" that appeared then. The ensuing production had broadly encroached upon the news market: Delarivier Manley's Atalantis was reviewed by a German academic journal in 1713 as work of contemporary public history. Christian Friedrich Hunold fled Hamburg in 1706 after his Satyrischer Roman had depicted the city's elegant urban life as a place of scandal. The French pseudo histories connected today with names such as Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (1644–1712) had become even more radical in their realism: they had depicted the real world with a detail historians remain unable to deactivate as "merely fiction".

It has been noted that Defoe's Robinson Crusoe followed Alexander Selkirk's "true" account. and that Crusoe's style of writing recycled modes of the Protestant spiritual autobiography. The presentation of his book had its own models, however, much rather in the contemporary French pseudo histories. René Auguste Constantin de Renneville's report of his imprisonment in the Bastille had appeared in English with Defoe's publisher William Taylor four years earlier. Renneville had promised: "Lives and strange Adventures of several Prisoners", Crusoe risked the focus on himself: "The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe". An imprisonment of 11 years had been Renneville's bargain, Crusoe made it 28 years. Renneville's English translator had complained of an author who was "not always in a Temper; sometimes he is all Piety and Godliness, and then again flies out into a Romantick Strain." Crusoe's "editor" Taylor repeated these complaints before the sailor himself raised his voice with the greatest inconsistencies imaginable, claiming that he was both, most real and healthy (though 84 years of age) and a man of an allegorical truth with which he stood on one level with Don Quixote, a hero of a roman à clef (so Crusoe), and Jesus Christ who had resorted to allegories and parables in order to reach his audience. Robinson Crusoe was serialized as possibly true history by The Original London Post; and it became the work of creative literature Jean-Jacques Rousseau could finally praise in his in 1762.

One can note a balance of opposing developments here: the 18th century witnessed the rise of increasingly realistic fictions, while both authors and critics defined the entire field of fictions as distinct from the historical. The development de-scandalised the market: Valuable fictions defended a higher truth, a truth beyond the flat, factual and historical truth of every-day experience. Theories of aesthetics praised the "imitation of nature" and the artist's almost divine power to create worlds of a deeper significance in the second half of the 18th century. The previous conflict between historians and romancers was thus finally resolved: Valuable Fictions and true histories became two fields the modern nations needed. Literary journals and literary histories became the privileged media of a new analysis of literary art – the development that has been noted above as one of status and that eventually caused the 19th century conceptual change of the word literature.

The market divide that led to the modern trivial production in the second half of the 18th century was the by product of this process. The rise of pornography beginning in the 1750s is an early sign for that divide.

The words "novel" and "romance"

The change of words, the rise of the word "novel" at the cost of the rivaling "romance", remained a Spanish and English phenomenon. Readers all over western Europe had welcomed the novel(la) or short history as an alternative in the second half of the 17th century. Only the English and the Spanish had, however, openly discredited the old production.

The change of taste remained a temporal phenomenon. Fénelon's Telemachus (1699/1700) already exploited a nostalgia for the old production of heroism and professed virtue. Jane Barker explicitly advertised her Exilius as "A new Romance", "written after the Manner of Telemachus" in 1715 to which she added a preface on the scandalous new production one had to get rid of. Robinson Crusoe spoke of his own book as a "romance" though he preferred, of course, readers to believe he was utterly real.

The term "novel" first peaked on the English market in the 1680s, when the novel(la) manifested itself as the alternative to the older "romance". It lost its attractiveness with ensuing scandalous production in the twilight between truth and fiction. The 1720s saw a second peak of "novels" with the first editions of classics of the genre and with new large scale "novels" in the style Eliza Haywood wrote. In the mid-18th century it was no longer clear whether the market had not simply developed two terms: "romance" as the generic term, "novel" as the term for the fashionable production that focused on modern life.

The late 18th-century brought an answer with the "romantic" movement's readiness to reclaim the word "romance" as term for explicitly grotesque and distant fictional settings. Robinson Crusoe became a "novel" in that period appearing now as a work of the new realism of fiction the 18th century had brought forth. The term "romance" was eventually restricted to love stories in the course of the 19th century.

Legitimating the novel: World Classics, 1670–1830

Pierre Daniel Huet's Traitté de l'origine des romans (1670) laid the ground for the early 18th-century market in classics of the novel. The theologian had not only dared to praise fictions; he had also explained techniques of theological reading, the interpretation of fictions: one could read novels and romances to gain insight into foreign and distant cultures (and into one's own culture), once one viewed them as something produced to achieve aims and to satisfy consumers. Christ had used parables to teach; ancient Milesians had used them to arouse sexual fantasies; France produced them at present to test the options of a less inhibited conversation between the sexes.

The decades around 1700 saw the appearance of new editions of Petronius, Lucian and Heliodorus of Emesa. The publishers equipped them with prefaces that referred to Huet's treatise and the canon it had established. Exotic fictions entered the market to give insight into the Islamic frame of mind. One read The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (first published in Europe from 1704 to 1715 in French, and translated immediately from this edition into English and German) as a contribution to Huet's history of romances.

New classics added to the market: The English Select Collection of Novels in six volumes (1720–22) is a milestone in this development, including Huet's Treatise with the European tradition of the modern novel (that is, novella) from Machiavelli's to Marie de LaFayette's masterpieces.

Aphra Behn's prose fictions had appeared as "novels" in the 1680s and were reprinted in collections of her works which turned the scandalous authoress into a modern classic. Fénelon's Telemachus (1699/1700) became a classic within three years after its publication. New authors entered the market ready to use their personal names as producers of fiction: Eliza Haywood thus followed the footsteps of Aphra Behn in 1719 using her name with unprecedented pride.

"The reformation of manners", 1678–1790

's Pamela (1741)]] The production of classics allowed the novel to gain a past, prestige and a canon. It called at the same moment for a present production of equal merits. A wave of mid-18th-century works that proclaimed their intent to propagate improved moral values gave critics modern novels they could discuss publicly. Instead of banning novels, the efforts at reformation of manners that had begun in the 1690s now led to their reform.

Female authors and heroines were the first affected by the development. Madame d'Aulnoy and Delarivier Manley became notorious examples of a bygone age of impudence. They had washed their dirty linen in public and used their novels to reinvent themselves and convert their own notoriety into fame. The new female heroines had to show intimacy and sensitivity where their early 18th century ancestors had been ready to appear in public in order to sanitize their reputations. Intimate confessions and blushes filled the new novels, feelings of guilt, even where suspicions were groundless (early 18th century heroines had defended their virtues and reputations flamboyantly even where they had gone astray). The modern heroines acted transparently, whereas their early 18th century counterparts had resorted to secret dealings in endless intrigues. Madame de La Fayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678) can be read as the first novel that showed the new behavior.

's Werther (1774).]] To become a fashion, if not the standard of modern behavior, the new personality features needed new social environments. Marie de La Fayette's Princesse had fallen into a desperate situation as soon as she risked the outrageous transparency to confess her feelings for another man to her husband. Neither he nor his rival knew how to continue once all this was clear. Mid-18th-century novels created alternatives: protagonists acted transparently, their antagonists saw that as a weakness and exploited and ruined them – quite the early 18th century option – but now the moral balance shifted: the open-hearted heroines were no longer victims one could blame for a lack of virtue, but tragic (or melodramatic) figures who had defended a better world. Other novels placed the new transparent heroines into equally new caring environments. Their families resisted temptations to marry them off against their wills, and men around them resisted temptations to seduce them in moments of weakness. The message was that respect and care were to meet open-heartedness in a new age of sensibility. Other novels experimented with surprising acts of an enlightened rationality with which their protagonists could escape deadlock situations far worse than the one Marie de La Fayette's Princesse had produced with her confessions.

The last volume of Antoine François Prévost's Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality, "Manon Lescaut" (1731), aroused a scandal with its melodramatic turns and its unresolved conflicts.

Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), composed "to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes" focused, by contrast, on the potential victim, a heroine of all the modern virtues vulnerable through her social status and her occupation as servant of the libertine who falls in love with her. Eventually, she shows the power to reform her antagonist.

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert's Life of the Swedish Countess of G** (1747/48) tested the options of rationality. The titular countess had to decide between two husbands after her first, believed to be dead, returned from a Siberian war captivity. Both her husbands, former friends, had to come to terms with the rational problem her situation presented (and did it in a startling mixture of piety and modern philosophy).

edition.]] Male heroes adopted the new sentimental character traits in the 1760s. Laurence Sterne's Yorick, the hero of the Sentimental Journey (1768) did so with an enormous amount of humour. Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1766) and Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771) produced the far more serious role models.

The virtuous production inspired a sub- and counterculture of pornographic novels. Greek and Latin authors in modern translations had provided elegant transgressions on the market of the belles lettres for the last century. Satirical novels like Richard Head's English Rogue (1665) had led their heroes through urban brothels, women authors like Aphra Behn had offered their heroines alternative careers as precursors of the 19th-century femmes fatales – without creating a subculture. The market for belles lettres had been openly transgressive as long as it did not find any reflections in other media. The new production beginning with works like John Cleland's Fanny Hill (1748) differed in that it offered almost exact reversals of the plot lines the virtuous production demanded. Fanny Hill is introduced to a life of prostitution, learns to enjoy her part and establishes herself as a free and economically independent individual – in editions one could only expect to buy under the counter.

Openly uncontrollable conflicts arrived in the 1770s with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). The titular hero realised how impossible it had become for him to integrate into the new conformist society. Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) shows the other extreme, with a group of aristocrats playing games of intrigue and amorality.

The sentimental protagonists of the 1740s had already surprised their readers and aroused a debate whether human nature was correctly depicted with these new novels. They discovered a truth of the heart one had not dared to deal with so far. The radical and lonely characters that appeared in the 1760s and 1770s broke with traditions and eventually needed entirely new back-stories to become plausible. Childhoods, and adolescences had to explain why these protagonists should have developed so differently. The concept of character development began to fascinate novelists in the 1760s. Jean Jacques Rousseau's novels focused on such developments in philosophical experiments. The German Bildungsroman offered quasi-biographical explorations and autobiographical self examinations of the individual and its personal development by the 1790s. A subcategory of the genre focused on the creation of an artist (if not the artist writing the novel). It led to the 19th-century production of novels exploring how modern times form the modern individual.

Fiction as a new experimental field, 1700–1800

, Tristram Shandy, vol.6, p.70-71 (1769)]] The new 18th-century status of the novel as an object of debate is particularly manifest in special development of philosophical and experimental novels.

Philosophical fiction was not exactly new. Plato's dialogues were embedded in fictional narratives. Utopias had added to this production with works from Thomas More's Utopia (1516) to Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun (1602). Works such as these had not been read as novels or romances but as philosophical texts. The 1740s saw new editions of More's work under the title that created the tradition: Utopia: or the happy republic; a philosophical romance (1743).

Voltaire utilised the romance to write philosophy with his Micromegas: a comic romance. Being a severe satire upon the philosophy, ignorance, and self-conceit of mankind (1752, English 1753). His Zadig (1747) and Candide (1759) became central texts of the French Enlightenment and of the modern novel. Jean-Jacques Rousseau bridged the genres with his less fictional (1762) and his far more romantic Julie, or the New Heloise (1761). It made sense to publish these works as romances or novels, works of fiction, only because prose fiction had become an object of public discussion. The public reception provided by the new market of journals was both freer and wider than the discussion in journals of philosophy would have been. It had become attractive to step into the realm of fiction in order to provide matter for the ongoing debates.

The genre's new understanding of itself resulted in the first metafictional experiment, pressing against its limitations. Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767) rejected continuous narration. It expanded the author-reader communication from the preface into the plot itself – Tristram Shandy develops as a conversation between the narrative voice and his audience. Besides narrative experiments, there were visual experiments: a marbled page, a black page to express particular sorrow, a page of little lines to visualize the plot lines of the book one was reading. Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub (1704) is an early precursor in this field – a work that employs visual elements with similar ambition – yet hardly a text in the tradition of the original novel or its rival the romance.

The novel as national literature, 19th-century developments

on the cover of L'Eclipse June 14, 1868 on his way across the English Channel]] By the beginning of the 19th century, prose fiction had moved from a field of questionable entertainment and precarious historicity into the centre of the new literary debate. A new arrangement of the sciences taught at modern universities would finally protect the development. Theology, law, medicine, and philosophy had been the four traditional faculties. National literature became the object of a new university system in which the natural sciences acted as exact sciences, the social sciences with an outlook on the modern societies, and the humanities with a responsibility for history and culture. Literature in a definition that turned fiction into a central literary production would be a subject of the philologies in the latter segment of research.

The traditional task of literary historians, to review the sciences, was referred to the individual sciences and their respective academic journals. The general debate of literature was turned into an exploration of poetry and fiction.

The modes of this exploration were new. Poetry had been analysed in poetological treatises asking for perfection and the rules that had to be mastered in the different genres. Early 18th-century critics had been ready to see the opera as the central poetic production of the modern era. One would differentiate between an Italian and a French style and consider an international production. This arrangement was discredited in the course of the 18th century. Operas became music and the new literary histories offered in the 19th century focused on the greatest works an outstanding nation or language had brought forth. The new interest lay in interpretations. Georg Gottfried Gervinus' Geschichte der poetischen National-Literatur der Deutschen, published in its successive volumes between 1835 and 1842 became the European model with a project that rather resembled Pierre Daniel Huet's Treatise on the Origin of Romances (1670) than any of the previous works on poetry or on literature (the sciences). The new literary historian spoke about the cultural significance of the works he analysed. Unlike Huet Gervinus was solely interested in the works of his nation – whose history and mentality he hoped do better understand. Other nations were of interest as they had threatened the intellectual development to be observed. Huet had given a world history of fiction. The 19th-century literary historian offered his project with the controversial promise to show how the nation had freed and found itself in its fictional production.

The project persuaded scholars in France and Italy to bring forth similar histories for their nations whilst the Anglophone world remained rather uninterested. Hippolyte Taine eventually offered the first history of English literature at first in French, a year later, in 1864 in an English version that opened with a look back on the 1st century of modern literary history:

HISTORY, within a hundred years in Germany, and within sixty years in France, has undergone a transformation owing to a study of literatures.       The discovery has been made that a literary work is not a mere play of the imagination, the isolated caprice of an excited brain, but a transcript of contemporary manners and customs and the sign of a particular state of intellect. The conclusion derived from this is that, through literary monuments, we can retrace the way in which men felt and thought many centuries ago. This method has been tried and found successful.       We have meditated over these ways of feeling and thinking and have accepted them as facts of prime significance. We have found that they were dependent on most important events, that they explain these, and that these explain them, and that henceforth it was necessary to give them their place in history, and one of the highest.

, December 7, 1867.]] , the political novelist in the centre of the public outrage he unleashed (painting by Henry de Groux, 1898).]] The essentially nationalistic analysis of poetical fictions had begun in Germany in the late 1720s with a look back on three decades of international European fashions. German authors had embraced French "gallantry" as the essence of elegance and style. The country had gained nothing in the wars the European nations had supported on behalf of the Empire. The comparatively European decades of the Nine Years War (1689–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) and the Great Northern War (1700–1721) had eventually left the intellectual elite disenchanted. The discussion of the nation's poetry Johann Christoph Gottsched proposed at the end of the 1720s formulated a national project connected with the offer to reform the entire market of German poetry. Johann Jakob Bodmer, Johann Jakob Breitinger, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing adopted Gottsched's project and created the national discourse that finally gained national importance between 1789 and 1813 when Germany had to define itself in the events of the French Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic Wars.

At the turn into the 19th century the first German territories implemented the new field of research in their national school curricula. Three decades later the first histories of German literature apperaed with proposals of the canon the young nation would need. Literature made its way into the educational systems, it became the object of the university philologies, of German classes at schools, and of criticism in the public media.

The new topic was of immense interest thanks to its focus on the nation, thanks to its controversial perspectives on the nation's history and identity, thanks to its attempts to reform the markets of fiction. The secularization pushed the new topic in France and Germany. Literature offered worldly texts to be interpreted in schools and at universities where religious texts had been interpreted thus far.

The Anglophone world adopted the new topic reluctantly. London had developed a commercial production of the belles lettres, independent from the markets of Amsterdam and Paris, as early as the early 18th century. The new market had found its own commercial criticism and did not need an academic variant with a distinctly national perspective. Shakespeare had become an object of national veneration without the help of academic critics by the 1760s. A rediscovery of the past had followed, with such doubtful discoveries as the Ossian-fragments. Critics discussed the belles lettres in fashionable English journals. Latest theatre performances were discussed in the newspapers at the end of the 18th century. The continental debate of "literature" remained uninteresting with all the academic institutions it promised to generate.

Great Britain did not need new national platforms. State politics and religion were open platforms – in Britain protected by modern press laws since the 1690s. The continent had opted for a fundamental secularisation. Britain rested on the union of state and church, the USA on the opposite notion of private religiosity and a state that would not interfere. Neither country needed a topic for school lessons, in which worldly texts would be used in much the same way as religious texts had been used before. As for criticism of plays and fictions one could well live with the commercial criticism the market brought forth. Germany invented a dualism of "Literaturwissenschaft", literary criticism formulated by university professors, and "Literaturkritik", literary criticism as to be found in the newspapers. A single word remained enough to speak of literary criticism in English.

on trial in 1895.]] The new topic was eventually adopted both in Britain and the USA in the 1870 and 1880s. The educational systems of the Western nations developed international standards. The Western canon became the project of a new international competition. The Western nations defined themselves as "Kulturnationen" as exporters of a specific Western civilisation in the middle the second European colonization wave. To do this they eventually shared the same academic institutions that monitored, evaluated and basically organised their public controversies. Literature and culture had been topics the nations could hope to handle with more competence than religion. The "Republic of Letters", the "respublica literaria", the early modern scientific community that had coined the term literature had definied itself as the first truly pluralistic institution. The universities it required would be state run and controlled by the respective nations.

The new topic spread in win-win situations. The publishing industry promoted fiction, literature, Belletristik. New authors profited from the exchange. The reading public eagerly followed the debate and was ready to identify with the greatest authors now produced.

New commercial rules began to structure the exchange. Most of the early 18th-century authors of fiction had published anonymously. They had offered their manuscripts and received all the payment to be expected for the manuscript. The new copyright laws introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries promised a profit share on all future editions and created a new strategy with the revolutionary work, readers would initially hardly understand. One would publish such a work in a small first edition hoping for critics to prove it into an eternal classic. Novelists, a scandalous branch of authors a century ago, assumed entirely new roles as public voices; they spoke as their nation's conscience, as national sages, as far sighted judges in newspapers, in public debates and in entirely new celebrations of their public status. The novelist who reads in theater halls and book shops is a 19th-century invention.

Fiction gained new qualities in the exchange. The literary market gave rise to difficult texts that could not hope to be understood without critical interpretations. New novels openly addressed the present political and social issues – sure to be discussed by media focusing on the same issues. Responsibility became a key issue: Responsibility of the citizen whose voice is heard or responsibility of the artist whose work future generations will have evaluate. The theoretical debate concentrated on the moral soundness of modern novels, on the integrity of individual artists, and on the provocative claims of aestheticists such as Oscar Wilde and Algernon Charles Swinburne who proposed to write "art for art's sake", that is with a responsibility the present audience and the present critics might not be able to understand.

The up-market of works deserving to be read as "literature" was matched by a growing market of "popular fictions", "trivial literature" – a market that discontinued the production of chapbooks and grew in the former field of elegant belles lettres. New institutions like the circulating library affected the market as platforms publishing houses would address with their first editions. Fiction became the object of a new mass reading public protected, monitored and analysed by nation wide debates and by institutions the new states would hope to control.

The developments did not lead to stable definitions of the terms it popularized. "Art", "literature" and "culture" became much rather the field of controversies authors, critics, and readers would feed in ever new attempts to find platforms for their interests. The exchange affected from now onwards children at school as much as intellectuals who risked their lives in public controversies.

Pushing art to its limits: Romanticism, 1770–1850

, ca. 1800.]] The very word romanticism made direct reference to the art of romances. The genre, as opposed to the modern novel, experienced a revival with gothic fiction from Ann Radcliffe's "romance" The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) to M.G. Lewis' "romance" The Monk (1795).

The new romances not only attacked the modern novel's "natural" depictions of life, they destabilized the very differentiation modern critics had been trying to establish between serious classical art and popular fiction. Gothic romances were grotesque. Their subject matter deserved less credit than the worst medieval tales of Arthurian knighthood. If the Amadis had troubled Don Quixote with curious fantasies, the new romantic tales were worse: they became nightmares, they explored sexual fantasies, they led to the end of human civilization.

The authors of this new type of fiction could be (and were) accused of exploiting all available topics to thrill, arouse or horrify their audience. These new romantic novelists could, at the same time, claim to explore the entire realm of fictionality. New–psychological–interpreters would read these works as encounters with the deeper hidden truth of the human imagination or the collective mind with all its recesses: sexual motives, anxieties, and insatiable desires. Under a psychological reading, novels were said to explore our deeper motives by moving into the field of art and by trying to reach and transgress its limitations. Artistic freedom would reveal what had not previously been openly visible: a theory that turned Huet's retrospective cultural description into an exploration of our options. The literary world started to recognize the fragment as art potentially surpassing all the works of intricate composition. Terror and kitsch entered the productions with explorations of the trivial.

The romantic fiction of de Sade, Poe, Mary Shelley and E. T. A. Hoffmann, their works from Les 120 Journées de Sodome (1785/1904), Die Elixiere des Teufels (1815), to Frankenstein (1818), and the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) would later attract 20th-century psychoanalysts and supply the images of 20th and 21st century horror films, love romances, fantasy novels, role-playing computer games and surrealist art.

"Realism" and the reevaluation of the past and the present, 1790–1900

's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)]] The ancient romancers most commonly wrote fiction about the remote past. The present had been the object of "curious" explorations in the hands of satirists like Grimmelshausen and Richard Head and in the hands of scandalous authors from de Courtilz de Sandras to the anonymous author of La Guerre d'Espagne (Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1707).

's War and Peace (1868/69)]] 's Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (1870)]] Walter Scott's historical novel Waverley (1814) broke with these traditions. Scott did not write to satisfy the audience with temporal escapism, nor did he threaten the boundaries between fact and fiction with his works, as Constantin de Renneville had done with his French Inquisition (1715). Scott's work remained a novel, a work of art. He used the art of imagination to re-evaluate history by rendering things, incidents and protagonists as only the novelist was allowed to do. His work remained historical fiction, yet it questioned existing historical perceptions. The special power was partly gained through research: Scott the novelist, resorted to documentary sources as any historian would have done, but as an artist he gave things a deeper significance. Attracting a far wider market than any historian could address, and rendering the past vividly, his work destabilized public perceptions of that past.

Most 19th-century authors hardly went beyond illustrating and supporting widespread historical views. The more interesting titles won fame by doing what no historian nor journalist would do: make the reader experience another life. Émile Zola's novels depicted the world of which Marx and Engels wrote in a non-fictional mode. Slavery in the United States, abolitionism and racism became topics of far broader public debate thanks to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), as whose characters provided personifications for topics that had previously been discussed mainly in the abstract. Charles Dickens led the audience into contemporary British workhouses: his novels imitated firsthand accounts of child labour. War changed with Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (1868/69) from historical fact to a world of personal fate. Crime became a personal reality with Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866). Women authors had dominated the production of fiction from the 1640s into the early 18th century, but few before George Eliot so openly questioned the position of women, the precepts of their education, and their social position.

As the novel became the most interesting platform of modern debates–allegedly free, as art could claim to be in the modern secular western societies–a race began between nations to (re-)establish their national literatures with novels as the essential production that could link the present with the past. Alessandro Manzoni's, I Promessi Sposi (1827) did this for Italy; Russia and the surrounding Slavonic brought forth their first novels; the Scandinavian countries entered the race.

With the new appreciation of history, the future also became a topic for fiction. Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the 20th century (1733) had been a satire, presenting a future that was basically the present age, but with the Jesuits secretly ruling the globe. Louis-Sébastien Mercier‘s L'An 2440 (1771) had gone a step further and created an enlightened future, that one could establish immediately if only one dared to live according to better moral precepts. The step into a different future began with Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826): a work whose plot culminated in the catastrophic last days of a mankind extinguished by the plague, even if it remained an autobiographical allegory of the authoress deploring her personal losses. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1887) and H. G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895) were, by contrast, marked by the idea of long term technological and biological developments. Industrialization, Darwin's theory of evolution and Marx's theory of class divisions shaped these works and turned historical processes into a subject matter of wide debate: Bellamy's Looking Backward became the second best selling book of the 19th century after Harriet Beecher-Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Such works of scientific reflection inspired a whole genre of popular science fiction as the 20th century approached.

Explorations of the self and the modern individual, 1790–1930

's Wilhelm Meister (1795)]] The individual, the potentially isolated hero, had stood at the centre of romantic fictions since the Middle Ages. The early novel(la) had placed the story itself at the centre: it was driven by plot, by incident and accident, rather than being the story of a single larger-than-life figure. And yet, the individual had returned with a wave of satirical romances and historical pseudo romances. Individuals such as Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Pamela, and Clarissa reintroduced the old romantic focus on the individual as the centre of what was to become the modern novel.

Ancient, medieval and early modern fictional characters lacked certain features that modern readers expect. Epics and romances created heroes, individuals who would fight against knight after knight, change (as an Assyrian princess) into men's clothes, survive alone on an island – whilst it would never see its personal experience as an individualizing factor. The early modern novelist had remained a historian as much as the author of the most personal French contemporary memoir. As soon as it came to relating the facts and experiences, it became a question of proper writing skills.

The modern individual changed. The rift can first be seen in the works of medieval mystics and early modern Protestant autobiographers: moments in which they witnessed a change in their very experience of things, an inner isolation they would only be able to communicate to someone who had experienced the same. The sentimental experience created a new field of – secular, rather than religiously motivated – individualizations which immediately invited followers to join. Werther's step out of the value systems that surrounded him, his desperate search for the one and only soul to understand him, inspired an instantaneous European fashion. Napoleon told Goethe he had read the volume about a dozen times; others were seen wearing breeches in Werther's colour to signal that they were experiencing the same exceptionalism. The novel proved the ideal medium for the new movements as it was ultimately written from an individual's point of view with the aim to unfold in the silence of another's individual mind.

The late 18th-century exploration of personal developments created room for depictions of personal experiences; it gained momentum with the romantic exploration of fictionality as a medium of creative imagination; and it gained a political edge with the 19th-century focus on history and the modern societies. The rift between the individual and his or her social environment had to have roots in personal developments which this individual shared with those around him or her, with his or her class or the entire nation. Any such rift had the power to criticize the collective histories the modern nations were just then producing. The new personal perceptions the protagonists of novels offered were on the other hand interesting as they could easily become part of the collective experience the modern nation had to create.

(1913–1927) with handwritten revision notes by Marcel Proust.]] The novel's individual perspective allowed for personal reevaluations of the public historical perceptions and it allowed for personal developments that could still lead back into modern societies. The 19th-century Bildungsroman became the arena of such explorations of personal developments that separated the individual from, and then reunited it with, his or her social environment. Outsider perspectives became the field of mid-19th-century explorations. The artist's life had been an interesting topic before with the artist being by public definition the exceptional individual whose perceptions naturally enabled him to produce different views. Novels from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister (1795) to Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927) and James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) created an entire genre of the Künstlerroman. Jane Austen's Emma (1815), Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856), Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1873–77), and George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871–72) brought female protagonists into the role of the outstanding observer. Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist (1839) and Gottfried Keller's Green Henry (1855) focused on the perspectives of children, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) added a drop-out student who became a murderer to the spectrum of special observers whose views would promise reinterpretations of modern life.

The exploration of the individual's perception eventually revolutionized the very modes of writing fiction. The search for one's personal style stood in the centre of the competition among authors in the 19th century, now that novelists had become publicly celebrated minds. The destabilization of the author-text connection, which 20th century criticism was to propose later on, finally led to experiments with what had been the individual's voice so far – speaking through the author or portrayed by him. These options were to be widened with new concepts of what texts actually were with the beginning of the 20th century.

The novel and the global market of texts: 20th- and 21st-century developments

.]] edition of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses late 1990s?]] 2008]] Given the number of new editions and the place of the modern novel among the genres sold in bookshops today, the novel is far from the crisis predicted by John Barth. Literature has not ended in "exhaustion" or in a silent "death"; nor have bound paper books been superseded by such new media as cinema, television or such new channels of distribution as the Internet or e-books. Novels such as the Harry Potter (1997–2007) books have created public sensation among an audience critics had seen as lost.

Novels were among the first material artefacts the Nazis burnt in public celebrations of their power in 1933; and they remained the very last thing they allowed their publishers to print as World War II ended in the devastation of central Europe: fiction could still be employed to keep the retreating troops in dream worlds of an idyllic homeland waiting for them. Novels were in the pockets of American soldiers who went to Vietnam and in the pockets of those who protested against the Vietnam War: Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf and Carlos Castaneda's Journey to Ixtlan (1972) had become cult classics of inner resistance. While it was difficult to learn anything about Siberia's concentration camps in the strictly censored Soviet media, it was a novel, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) and its proto-historic expansion The Gulag Archipelago (1973) that eventually gave the world an inside view.

The novel remains both public and private. It is a public product of modern print culture even where it circulates in illegal samizdat copies. It remains difficult to target. Totalitarian regimes can close down Internet service providers, and control theatres, cinemas, radio and television stations, whilst individual paper copies of a novel can be smuggled into countries, defying strict censorship, and read there in cafés and parks almost as safely as at home. Its covers can be as inconspicuous as those of Iranian editions of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1988). An Orwellian regime would have to search households and to burn every retrievable copy: an engagement of distopian dimensions that only a novel, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), would envisage.

The artefact that constituted one of the earliest flashpoints in the current cultural confrontation between the secular West and the Islamic East, Rushdie's Satanic Verses (1988), exemplifies almost all the advantages the modern novel has over its rivals. It is a work of epic dimensions no film maker could achieve, a work of privacy and individuality of perspective wherever it leads into the dream worlds of its protagonists, a work that uniquely anticipated ensuing political debates, and a work many Western critics classified as one of the greatest novels ever written. It is postmodernist in its ability to play with the entire field of literary traditions without ever sacrificing its topicality.

The democratic West depicted itself as the advocate of literature as the freest form of self-expression. The Islamic fundamentalist interpretation of the same confrontation has its own historical validity. This interpretation sees a conflict between Western secular nations and a postsecular religious world. In this view, the West has severed its religious roots and begun to idolize an arrangement of secular "pluralistic" debates. "Literature", "art", and "history" – the subject matter of the humanities – have become a Western substitute for religion. The Islamic republic eventually demonstrated how far the West had created its own inviolable if not sacred spheres in this development: Westerners can become atheists, they can admire any "blasphemy" as "art", but they cannot act with the same freedom in the field of history. Holocaust denial is criminalised in several Western nations in defence of secular pluralism. The Islamic nations protect, so goes the rationale, at the heart of the conflict a different hierarchy of discourses.

In a longer perspective, the conflict arose with the worldwide expansion of Western literary and cultural life in the 20th century. To look back, around 1700 fiction had been a small but virulent market of fashionable books in the sphere of public history. By contrast, in 19th century Europe the novel had become the center of a new literary debate. The 20th century began with the Western export of new global conflicts, new technologies of telecommunication and new industries. The new arrangement of the academic disciplines became a world standard. Within this system the humanities are the ensemble of subjects that evaluate and organise public debate, from art and literature to history. Former colonies and modern third world nations adopted this arrangement in their educational systems in order to pursue equal footing with the "leading" industrial nations. Literature entered their public spheres almost automatically as the arena of free personal expression and as a field of national pride in which one had to search for one's historical identity, as the Western nations had done before.

. A complex interaction is organised by public and academic literary criticism as the central provider of discussions, education and media attention.]] A number of literatures could challenge the West with traditions of their own: Chinese novels are older than any comparable Western works. Other regions of the world had to begin their traditions as the Slavonic and Scandinavian nations had done in the 19th-century's European competition: South Asia and Latin America joined the production of world literature at the beginning of the 20th century. The run for the first black African novel to be written by a black African author is today a topic of research in postcolonialist literary studies. The race was fueled by Western theories of cultural superiority: 20th-century critics such as Georg Lukács and Ian Watt saw the novel as the form of self expression characteristic of the "modern Western individual". The worldwide spread of the novel was monitored and mentored by such Western institutions as the Nobel Prize in Literature. The list of its laureates can be read as a chronicle of the gradual expansion of Western literary life. Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian poet and novelist to receive the prize in 1913, Japanese Yasunari Kawabata received it in 1968, Colombian Gabriel García Márquez in 1982; the Nigerian Wole Soyinka, honoured in 1986, became the first black African author to receive the award; the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz became the first novelist of the Arab world to do so in 1988; Orhan Pamuk, honoured in 2006, is a Turkish novelist. .

The contemporary novel defends the significance it had won by the 1860s, and it has stepped beyond, into a new awareness of its public outreach. Nationwide debates can become international debates at any given moment. Today's novelists can address a worldwide public, with international institutions, prestigious prizes, and such far-reaching associations as the worldwide association of writers P.E.N. The exiled author, who is celebrated by the international audience whilst he or she is persecuted at home is a 20th-century (and now 21st-century) figure. The author as keeper of his or her nation's conscience is a new cultural icon of the age of globalization.

Back in the early 18th century some 20–60 titles per year, that is between one and three percent of the total annual English production of about 2,000 titles, could be reckoned as fiction – a total of 20,000–60,000 copies on the assumption of standard print runs of about 1,000 copies. In 2001 fiction made about 11% of the 119,001 titles published in the UK consumer book market. The percentage has remained relatively stable over the past 20 years, though the total numbers doubled from 5,992 in 1986 to 13,076 in 2001. The press output and the money made with fiction have risen disproportionately since the 18th century: According to Nielsen BookScan statistics published in 2009 UK publishers sold an estimated 236.8 million books in 2008. Adult fiction (an estimated 75.3 million copies) made 32% of this market. Children's, young adult and educational books, a section comprising best-sellers such as the Harry Potter volumes, made another 63.4 million copies, 27%. The total UK consumer market is supposed to have had a value £1,773m in 2008. Adult fiction made roughly a quarter of that value: £454m.

A vibrant literary life fuels the market. It unfolds in a complex interaction between authors, their publishing houses, the reading public, and a literary criticism of immense diversity voiced in the media and in the nation's educational systems. The latter provide through their branches of academic criticism many of the topics, the modes of discussion and to a good extent the experts themselves who teach and discuss literature in schools and in the media. Modern marketing of fiction reflects this complex interaction with an awareness of the specific reverberations a new title must find in order to reach a wider audience.

Different levels of communication mark successful modern novels as a result of the genre's present position in (or outside) literary debates. An elite exchange has developed between novelists and literary theorists, allowing for direct interactions between authors and critics. Authors who write literary criticism can eventually modify the very criteria under which theorists discuss their works. Literary recognition can also be gained when novels influence thinking about non-literary controversies. A third option remains with novels that find their audiences without the help of critical debate. Even serious novels can become the object of direct marketing strategies along the lines publishers usually reserve for "popular fiction".

Writing literary theory

Many of the techniques the novel developed over the past 100 years can be understood as the result of competition with the new 20th- (and 21st-) century mass media: film, comics and the World Wide Web shaped the novel. Shot and sequence, focus and perspective have moved from film editing to literary composition. Experimental 20th-century fiction is, at the same time, influenced by literary theory.

Literary theory, arising in the 20th century, questioned key factors that had been matters of agreement in 19th-century literary criticism: the author wrote the text, he was influenced by his period, by an intellectual climate the nation provided and by his personality. The work of art eventually reflected all these aspects, and literary critics recreated them. The ensuing debate identified a canon of the truly great works brought forth by each nation.

20th-century literary theory challenged all these notions. It moved along with what philosophers called the linguistic turn: the artifact to be read was primarily a text. The text unfolded a meaning in the reading process. The question was, what made the literary text so special? Its complexity: a simple answer that immediately called for a complex science to describe and to understand these complexities. The literary theorists argued that the literary criticism of the 19th century had not truly seen the text. It had concentrated on the author, his or her period, the culture that surrounded him or her, his or her psyche – factors outside the text, that had allegedly shaped it. Strict theorists argued that even the author, hitherto considered the central figure, whose message one wanted to understand, did not even have privileged access to the meaning and significance of his or her own work. Once the text was written it began to unfold associations, no matter whether one was its author or another reader. The theory debate stepped forth in redefinitions of its project: Formalism (1900–1920), New Criticism (1920–1965), Structuralism (1950–1980) and Poststructuralism (late 1960s through 1990s) became the major schools. The modes of analysis changed with each of these schools. All assumed that the text had its own meaning, independent of all authorial intentions and period backgrounds. If a monkey were to use a typewriter without any understanding of his actions, he would sooner or later produce a Shakespearean sonnet among his random texts, a text whose beauty and meaning we would be able to appreciate. Each of these schools proposed a criticism that directed its attention to an understanding of this inherent meaning.

, Ulysses (1922)]] James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) became the central text that explored the potential of the new theoretical options. The 19th-century narrator left the stage; what remained was a text one could read as a reflex of thoughts. The "stream of consciousness" replaced the authorial voice. The characters endowed with these new voices had no firm ground from which to narrate. Their audiences had to re-create what was purposefully broken. One of the aims was to represent the reality of thoughts, sensations and conflicting perspectives. William Faulkner was particularly concerned with recreating real life, an undertaking which he said was unattainable. Once the classical authorial voice was gone, the classical composition of the text could be questioned: Ulysses did that. The argumentative structure with which a narration used to make its points lost its importance. Each sentence connected to sentences readers recalled. Words reverberated in a worldwide circulation of texts and language. Critics would understand more of the possible allusions and supply them in footnotes.

Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925), Samuel Beckett's trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951) and The Unnamable (1953), Julio Cortázar's Rayuela (1963) and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973) all explore this new narrative technique. Alfred Döblin went in a slightly different direction with his Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), where interspersed non-fictional text fragments enter the fictional sphere to create a new form of realism.

Authors of the 1960s–Robert Coover is an example–fragmented their stories and challenged time and sequentiality as fundamental structuring concepts.

Postmodern authors subverted the serious debate with playfulness. The new theorists' claim that art could never be original, that it always played with existing materials, that language basically recalled itself had been an accepted truth in the world of trivial literature. A postmodernist could reread trivial literature as the essential cultural production. The creative avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s "closed the gap" and recycled popular knowledge, conspiracy theories, comics and films to recombine these materials in what was to become art of entirely new qualities. Roland Barthes' 1950s analysis of popular culture, his late 1960s claim that the author was dead whilst the text continued to live, became standards of postmodern theory. Novels from Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose (1980) and Foucault's Pendulum (1989) opened themselves to a universe of intertextual references while they thematized their own constructedness in a new postmodern metafictional awareness.

What separated these authors from 18th- and 19th-century predecessors who had invited other textual worlds into their own compositions, was the interaction the new authors sought with the field of literary criticism. 20th-century metafictional works expect literary historians to deal with them; literary critics and theorists become the privileged first readers that the new texts need in order to unfold. James Joyce is said to have said this about the reception he designed for his Ulysses (1922): "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality." – a statement to which Salman Rushdie referred in 1999, according to Paul Brians's Notes for Satanic Verses:

Asked about the possibility of "Cliff's Notes" to his writings, Rushdie answered that although he didn't expect readers to get all the allusions in his works, he didn't think such notes would detract from the reading of them: "James Joyce once said after he had published Ulysses that he had given the professors work for many years to come; and I'm always looking for ways of employing professors, so I hope to have given them some work too."

Novelists such as John Barth, Raymond Federman and Umberto Eco crossed the borders into criticism. Mixed forms of criticism and fiction appeared: "critifiction", a term Raymond Federman attempted to coin in 1993.

Whilst the postmodern movement has been criticized at times as theoretical if not escapist, it successfully unfolded in several films of the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century: Pulp Fiction (1994), Memento (2000), and The Matrix (1999–2003) can be read as new textual constructs designed to prove that we are surrounded by virtual realities, by realities we construct out of circulating fragments, of images, concept, a language of cultural materials the new filmmakers explore.

Writing world history

{| style="float:right;" |- |valign="top"| , 1902]] , Vladivostok, 1995]] , Buffalo, 2008]] , Warsaw, 2008]] , Munich, 2004]] |valign="top"| , 2006]] , Cologne, 2006]] , Salman Rushdie and Shimon Peres, New York City, 2008]] , Cologne, 2008]] , Oslo, 2007]] |} On the one hand, media and institutions of criticism enable the modern novel to become the object of global debate. On the other hand, novels themselves, individual books, continue to arouse attention with unique personal and subjective narratives that challenge all circulating views of world history. Novels remain personal. Their authors remain independent individuals even where they become public figures, in contrast to historians and journalists who tend, by contrast, to assume official positions. The narrative style remains free and artistic, whereas modern history has by contrast almost entirely abandoned narration and turned to the critical debate of interpretations. Novels are seen as part of the realm of "art", defended as a realm of free and subjective self-expression. Crossovers into other genres – the novel as film, the film as novel, the amalgam of the novel and the comic book that led to the evolution of the graphic novel – have strengthened the genre's influence on the collective imagination and the arena of ongoing debates.

Personal realities have attracted 20th- and 21st-century novelists: first in an explicit reaction to the new science of psychology, later, far more importantly, in a renewed interest in subject matter that almost automatically destabilizes and marginalizes the realities of "common sense" and collective history. Personal anxieties, daydreams, magic and hallucinatory experiences mushroomed in 20th-century novels. What would be a clinical psychosis if stated as a personal experience – in one extreme example, Gregor Samsa, the point of view character of Kafka's The Metamorphosis, awakes to find that he has become a giant cockroach – will, as soon as it is transformed into a novel, become the object of competing literary interpretations, a metaphor, an image of the modern experience of personal instability and isolation. The term "Kafkaesque" has joined the term "Orwellian" in common parlance to refer not only to aspects of literature, but of the world.

Each generation of the 20th century saw its unique aspects expressed in novels. Germany's lost generation of World War I veterans identified with the hero of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) (and with the tougher, more existentialist rival Thor Goote created as a national socialist alternative). The Jazz Age found a voice in F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Great Depression and the incipient Cold War in George Orwell. France's existentialism was prominently voiced in Jean Paul Sartre's Nausea (1938) and Albert Camus' The Stranger (1942). The counterculture of the 1960s gave Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf (1927) a new reception, while producing such iconic works of its own as Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996) became (with the help of the film adaptation) an icon of late 20th-century manhood and a reaction to the 20th-century production of female voices. Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Doris Lessing, Elfriede Jelinek became prominent female and feminist voices. Questions of racial and gender identities, the option to reclaim female heroines of a predominantly male cultural industry have fascinated novelists over the last two decades with their potential to destabilize the preceding confrontations.

The major 20th-century social processes can be traced through the modern novel: the history of the sexual revolution can be traced through the reception of sexually frank novels: D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover had to be published in Italy in 1928; British censorship lifted its ban as late as 1960. Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer (1934) created the comparable US scandal. Transgressive fiction from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) to Michel Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires (1998) entered a literary field that eventually opened itself to the production of frankly pornographic works such as Anne Desclos' Story of O (1954) to Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus (1978).

Crime became a major subject of 20th- and 21st-century novelists. The extreme confrontations of crime fiction reach into the very realities that modern industrialized, organized societies try and fail to eradicate. Crime is also an intriguing personal and public subject: criminals each have their personal motivations and actions. Detectives, too, see their moral codes challenged. Patricia Highsmith's thrillers became a medium of new psychological explorations. Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (1985–1986) crossed the borders into the field of experimental postmodernist literature.

The major political and military confrontations of the 20th and 21st centuries have inspired novelists. The events of World War II found their reflections in novels from Günter Grass' The Tin Drum (1959) to Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961). The ensuing cold war lives on in a bulk of spy novels that reach out into the realm of popular fiction. Latin American self awareness in the wake of the (failing) left revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a "Latin American Boom", connected today with the names of Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez and the invention of a special brand of postmodern magic realism. The unstable status of Israel and the Middle East have become the subject of Israeli and Arab perceptions. Contemporary fiction has explored the realities of the post-Soviet nations and those of post-Tiananmen China. Arguably, though, international perceptions of these events have been shaped more by images than words. The wave of modern media images has, in turn, merged with the novel in the form of graphic novels that both exploit and question the status of circulating visual materials. Art Spiegelman's two-volume Maus and, perhaps more important in its new theoretical approach, his In the Shadow of No Towers (2004) – a graphic novel questioning the reality of the images the 9/11 attacks have produced – are interesting artefacts here.

The extreme options of writing alternative histories have created genres of their own. Fantasy has become a field of commercial fiction branching into the worlds of computer-animated role play and esoteric myth. Its center today is J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954/55), a work that mutated from a book written for young readers in search of openly fictionalised role models into a cultural artefact of epic dimensions. Tolkien successfully revived northern European epic literature from Beowulf and the North Germanic Edda to the Arthurian Cycles and turned their incompatible worlds into an epic of global confrontations that magically preceded all known confrontations.

Science fiction has developed a broad variety of genres from the technological adventure Jules Verne had made fashionable in the 1860s to new political and personal compositions. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) has become a touchpoint for debate of Western consumerist societies and their use of modern technologies. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) focuses on the options of resistance under the eyes of public surveillance. Stanisław Lem, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke became modern classical authors of experimental thought with a focus on the interaction between men and machines. A new wave of authors has added post-apocalyptic fantasies and explorations of virtual realities in crossovers into the commercial production of quickly mutating sci-fi genres. William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) became a cult classic here and founded a new brand of cyberpunk science fiction.

Writing for the market of popular fiction

{| style="float:right;" |- |s to be bought in a German supermarket, 2009]] s in a German newspaper shop, 2009]] |} The contemporary market for trivial literature and popular fiction is connected to the market of "high" literature through the numerous genres that both fields share.

The historic advantage of genres is to allow the direct marketing of fiction. Whilst the reader of "high" literature will follow public discussions of novels, the low production has to employ the traditionally more direct and short-term marketing strategies of open declarations of their content. Genres fill the gap the critic leaves and work as direct promises of a foreseeable reading pleasure. The very lowest stratum of trivial fiction is based entirely on genre expectations, which it fixes with serializations and identifiable brand names. Ghost writers hide behind collective pseudonyms to ensure the steady supply of fictions that will have the very same hero, the very same story arc, and the very same number of pages, issue after issue.

Though a production not promoted by secondary criticism it is trivial literature that holds the big market share. Romance fiction had an estimated $1.375 billion share in estimated revenue of the US book market in 2007. Religion/inspirational followed with $819 million, science fiction/fantasy with $700 million, mystery with $650 million and classic literary fiction with $466 million according to data supplied by the Romance Writers of America homepage.

The most important subgenres were in this period, according to Romance Writers of America data given on the basis of numbers of releases:

Contemporary series romance: 25.7%

Contemporary romance: 21.8%

Historical romance: 16%

Paranormal romance: 11.8%

Romantic suspense: 7.2%

Inspirational romance: 7.1%

Romantic suspense (series): 4.7%

Other (chick-lit, erotic romance, women's fiction): 2.9%

Young adult romance: 2.8%

In a historical perspective one could be tempted to see modern trivial literature as the successor of the early modern chapbook. Both fields share a focus on readers in search of accessible reading satisfaction. Early modern booksellers stated a reduced vocabulary and a focus on plots as the advantages of the abridgements they sold. The market of chapbooks disappeared, however, in the course of the 19th century. The modern trivial production had by that time developed out of the once so elegant – early modern belles lettres.

The 20th-century love romance is a successor of the novels Madeleine de Scudéry, Marie de La Fayette, Aphra Behn, and Eliza Haywood wrote from the 1640s into the 1740s. The modern adventure novel goes back to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) and its immediate successors. Modern pornography has no precedent in the chapbook market; it goes back, again, to the libertine and hedonistic belles lettres, to John Cleland's Fanny Hill (1749) and its companions of the elegant 18th-century market. Ian Fleming's James Bond is a descendant of the anonymous yet extremely sophisticated and stylish narrator who mixed his love affairs with his political missions in La Guerre d'Espagne (1707). Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon exploits Tolkien, as well as Arthurian literature and its romantic 19th-century reflections. Modern horror fiction also has no precedent on the market of chapbooks – it goes back into the high market of early 19th-century romantic literature. Modern popular science fiction has an even shorter history, hardly dating past the 1860s.

on the book jacket of one of his novels]] The modern trivial production can be said to be the result of the 19th-century constitution of "high literature". Where "high literature" rose under the critical debates of literature, the production that failed to receive the same critical attention had to survive on the existing markets.

The emerging field of popular fiction immediately created its own stratifications with a production of bestselling authors such as Raymond Chandler, Barbara Cartland, Ian Fleming, Johannes Mario Simmel, Rosamunde Pilcher, Stephen King, Ken Follett, Patricia Cornwell, and Dan Brown who enjoy the potential to attract fans and who appear as role models in author-fan relationships. The lowest market segment does not develop any mythologies of authorship. It hardly differentiates between hero and author: one buys the new Perry Rhodan, Captain Future, or Jerry Cotton.

Trivial literature has been accused of promoting escapism and reactionary politics. It is supposedly designed to reinforce present divisions of class, power and gender. Nonetheless, popular fiction has dealt with almost any topic the modern public sphere has provided. Class and gender divisions are omnipresent in love stories: the majority of them harp on tragic confrontations that arise wherever a heroine of lower social status falls in love with a doctor, the wealthy heir of an estate or company, or just the Alpine farmer whose maid she happens to be. It is not said that these aspirations lead to happy endings. They can be read as escapist dreams of how one could change ones social status by marriage; they are at the same time constant indicators of existing or imaginary social barriers. All major political confrontations of the past one hundred years have become the scenery of trivial exploits, whether they focused on soldiers, spies or on civilians fighting between the lines. Conspiracy theories have mushroomed under the covers of trivial fictions from Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity (1980) to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (2003): they mirror a widespread feeling that the electorate of the Western democracies receive at best an illusion of freedom, an omnipresent picture presented in the media, whilst those who pull the strings hide in the dark.

The authors of trivial fictions–and that is the essential functional difference between them and their counterparts in the sphere of "high" literature–tend to proclaim that they have simply exploited the controversial topics. Dan Brown does this on his website answering the question whether his Da Vinci Code could be called an "anti-Christian" novel:

No. This book is not anti-anything. It's a novel. I wrote this story in an effort to explore certain aspects of Christian history that interest me. The vast majority of devout Christians understand this fact and consider The Da Vinci Code an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate. Even so, a small but vocal group of individuals has proclaimed the story dangerous, heretical, and anti-Christian. While I regret having offended those individuals, I should mention that priests, nuns, and clergy contact me all the time to thank me for writing the novel. Many church officials are celebrating The Da Vinci Code because it has sparked renewed interest in important topics of faith and Christian history. It is important to remember that a reader does not have to agree with every word in the novel to use the book as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith

The author of popular fictions has a fan community to serve and satisfy. He or she can risk rebuffing both the critical public and its literary experts in their search for interesting readings (as Dan Brown effectively does with his statement on possible readings of his novel). The trivial author's position towards his text is generally supposed to be relaxed. Authors of great literature are by contrast supposed to be compelled to write. They follow (says the popular mythology) their inner voices, a feeling for injustice, an urge to face a personal trauma, an artistic vision. The authors of trivial fictions have their own call: they must not fail the expectations of their audiences. A covenant of loyalty and mutual respect is the basis on which the author of popular fictions continues his or her work. The lower branches of the production have no contact to mythologies of authorship.

The boundaries between the so-called high and low have blurred in recent years through the explorations of postmodern and poststructuralist critics and through the exploitation of trivial works by the film industry. The present landscape of media – with television and the Internet indiscriminately reaching the entire audience – has a potential to destabilize boundaries between the fields. The division lines are, on the other hand, likely to stay intact as the critical discourse continues to need and to produce privileged objects of debate.

See also

Genres of the novel

Antinovel

Adventure

Bildungsroman

Campus

Comic

Crime fiction

Epistolary novel

Fantasy

Gothic

Historical novel

Horror

Künstlerroman

Magic Realism

Metafiction

New novel

Picaresque novel

Proletarian novel

Psychological novel

Romance

Science fiction

Speculative

Spy

Thriller

Westerns

Literature

Essay

Fiction

*Novelette

*Novella

*Romance (genre)

*Short story

Fiction writing

List of literary movements

Literature

Street Literature

Novels-related articles

Byzantine novel

Chain novel

First novel in English

List of best-selling books

Lists of books

List of historical novels

Live novel

NaNoWriMo

The Internet Book Database

Virtual novel

Notes

Further reading

Contemporary views

1651: Paul Scarron, The Comical Romance, Chapter XXI. "Which perhaps will not be found very Entertaining" (London, 1700). Scarron's plea for a French production rivalling the Spanish "Novels". online edition

1670: Pierre Daniel Huet, "Traitté de l'origine des Romans", Preface to Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne comtesse de La Fayette, Zayde, histoire espagnole (Paris, 1670). A world history of fiction. pdf-edition Gallica France

1683: [Du Sieur], "Sentimens sur l'histoire" from: Sentimens sur les lettres et sur l'histoire, avec des scruples sur le stile (Paris: C. Blageart, 1680). The new novels as published masterly by Marie de LaFayette. online edition

1702: Abbe Bellegarde, "Lettre à une Dame de la Cour, qui lui avoit demandé quelques Reflexions sur l'Histoire" in: Lettres curieuses de littérature et de morale (La Haye: Adrian Moetjens, 1702). Paraphrase of Du Sieur's text. online edition

1705/1708/1712: [Anon.] In English, French and German the Preface of The Secret History of Queen Zarah and the Zarazians (Albigion, 1705). Bellegarde's article plagiarised. online edition

1713: Deutsche Acta Eruditorum, German review of the French translation of Delarivier Manley's New Atalantis 1709 (Leipzig: J. L. Gleditsch, 1713). A rare example of a political novel discussed by a literary journal. online edition

1715: Jane Barker, preface to her Exilius or the Banish'd Roman. A New Romance (London: E. Curll, 1715). Plea for a "New Romance" following Fénlon's Telmachus. online edition

1718: Johann Friedrich Riederer, "Satyra von den Liebes-Romanen", from: Die abentheuerliche Welt in einer Pickelheerings-Kappe, 2 (Nürnberg, 1718). German satire about the wide spread reading of novels and romances. online edition

1742: Henry Fielding, preface to Joseph Andrews (London, 1742). The "comic epic in prose" and its poetics. online edition

Secondary literature

Erwin Rohde Der Griechesche Roman und seine Vorläufer (1876) [un-superseded history of the ancient novel]

Bakhtin, Mikhail. About novel. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981. [written during the 1930s]

Watt reads Robinson Crusoe as the first modern "novel" and interprets the rise of the modern novel of realism as an achievement of English literature, owed to a number of factors from early capitalism to the development of the modern individual.

Ben Edwin Perry The Ancient Romances (Berkeley, 1967) review

Burgess, Anthony (1970). "Novel, The" – classic Encyclopædia Britannica entry.

Miller, H. K., G. S. (1970) Rousseau and Eric Rothstein, The Augustan Milieu: Essays Presented to Louis A. Landa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). ISBN 0-19-811697-7

Arthur Ray Heiserman The Novel Before the Novel (Chicago, 1977) ISBN 0226325725

Updated edition of pioneering typology and history of over 50 genres; index of types and technique, and detailed chronology.

Spufford, Magaret, Small Books and Pleasant Histories (London, 1981).

Spencer, Jane, The Rise of Woman Novelists. From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen (Oxford, 1986).

Relihan, Constance C. (ed.), Framing Elizabethan fictions: contemporary approaches to early modern narrative prose (Kent, Ohio/ London: Kent State University Press, 1996). ISBN 0873385519

Eighteenth Century Fiction, Volume 12, Number 2-3">"Reconsidering The Rise of the Novel," Eighteenth Century Fiction, Volume 12, Number 2-3, ed. David Blewett (January–April 2000).

McKeon, Michael, Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

Josephine Donovan, Women and the Rise of the Novel, 1405–1726 revised edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).

A market study of the novel around 1700 interpreting contemporary criticism.

Inger Leemans, Het woord is aan de onderkant: radicale ideeën in Nederlandse pornografische romans 1670–1700 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2002). ISBN 90-75697-89-9.

from Leah Price

Rousseau, George (2004). Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature Culture and Sensibility (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). ISBN 1-4039-3454-1

Mentz, Steve, Romance for sale in early modern England: the rise of prose fiction (Aldershot [etc.]: Ashgate, 2006). ISBN 0-7546-5469-9

Schultz, Lydia, "Flowing against the traditional stream: consciousness in Tillie Olsen's 'Tell Me a Riddle.'" Melus, 1997.

Rubens, Robert, "A hundred years of fiction: 1896 to 1996. (The English Novel in the Twentieth Century, part 12)." Contemporary Review, December 1996.

Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternative History. Continuum, 2010. ISBN 978-1-4411-7704-9

Category:Fiction Category:Fiction forms

Name	Joell Ortiz
Background	solo_singer
Born	July 6, 1980 (age 30)
Origin	Brooklyn, New York, United States
Genre	Hip hop
Occupation	Rapper
Years active	1999 - present
Label	SRC Records, Universal Motown
Associated acts	Slaughterhouse, Immortal Technique, Big Noyd, Ras Kass, Battles
Url	www.joellortiz.com

Joell Ortiz (born July 6, 1980) is an American rapper from Brooklyn, New York.

Biography

Joell Ortiz is an American rapper of Puerto Rican descent. Ortiz grew up in the Cooper Park Houses in the East Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York formerly signed to Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment record label. He was featured in the Unsigned Hype column of the March 2004 issue of The Source Magazine and was also selected as Chairman's Choice in XXL Magazine. During the same time Joell also went on to win the 2004 EA Sports Battle which earned his song Mean Business a spot on the NBA Live 2005 soundtrack. The same year he was offered a contract to Jermaine Dupri's So So Def label. The deal quickly went sour which caused Joell to start beef with Jermaine. Joell has since collaborated with KRS-One and Kool G. Rap.

Joell released his street album called "" April 24, 2007 on Koch Records. The album was recorded while Joell was trying to get signed and going through some tough times personally. Even though he was signed to Aftermath Entertainment, Dr. Dre allowed him to release the street album on Koch Records. The Brick features productions from Showbiz, The Alchemist, Domingo, Ho Chi from Killahertz Productions, Lil’ Fame of M.O.P., Novel, and Moss, among others. Guest spots include Big Daddy Kane, Styles P, Big Noyd, M.O.P, Akon, Immortal Technique, Grafh, Ras Kass, Stimuli, and Novel.

Music career

The Brick (Bodega Chronicles)

Though signed to Aftermath, Ortiz released an album titled The Brick (Bodega Chronicles) April 24, 2007 on Koch Records. The Brick features production by Showbiz, Street Radio, and The Alchemist, among others. Guest artists include rappers Big Daddy Kane, Styles P, Big Noyd, Akon, Immortal Technique, Grafh, and Ras Kass.

Departure from Aftermath and joining Slaughterhouse

Ortiz parted ways with Aftermath Entertainment on April 15, 2008.

Joe Budden reached out to Crooked I, Royce Da 5'9", Joell Ortiz, and Nino Bless for a track titled "Slaughterhouse" on his digital release, Halfway House. Based on the reception of the track, they decided to form a super-group, minus Nino Bless, and named it after the first song they made together. The album features production from Alchemist, DJ Khalil, Mr. Porter, Streetrunner, plus guest appearances from Pharoahe Monch, K-Young, and The New Royales. In 2010 the group signed to Shady Records and left E1 Entertainment.

A remix of Joell Ortiz' "Hip Hop" featuring Jadakiss and Saigon appeared on a fictitious urban radio station in the popular video game GTA IV.

Signing with SRC/Universal Motown and Free Agent

Ortiz started to have problems with E1 Entertainment and wanted to leave the label, but E1 would not let him. After almost a year, Ortiz finally left the label on November 5, 2010. In August 2010 Ortiz signed a deal with Steve Rifkind's label SRC Records and Universal Motown.

In an October 31, 2010 interview on Conspiracy Worldwide Radio, Joell Ortiz discussed his relationship with Eminem and the flood of record labels that have flocked to sign him after his Free Agent album is released. He also spoke of Eminem's excitement at working with him.

Discography

Studio albums

(2007)

Free Agent (2011)

EP's

Farewell Summer EP (2010)

Collaboration albums

2009: Slaughterhouse (with Slaughterhouse)

Mixtapes

Who The Fuck Is Joell Ortiz? (2004)

The Re-Up (2008)

Covers The Classics (2009)

Road Kill (2009)

Defying The Predictable (w/Novel) (2010)

Music Videos

2007 Hip Hop

2007 Brooklyn Dir: Rik Cordero

2007 Stomp (Smif-N-Wessun feat. Rock & Joell Ortiz)

2007 Ups and Downs

2007 Dear God 125 (parts 1-4)

2007 Latino

2007 'Stomp (Smif-N-Wessun feat. Joell Ortiz) Dir: Rik Cordero

2008 Memories Dir: Rik Cordero

2008 Black Spartans (Emperor Chi feat. Saigon & Joell Ortiz) Dir: PicturePerfect

2008 Good Times (feat. Dante Hawkins) Dir: Carl Allegard

2008 Shootin (Duo Live feat. Billionz, Joell Ortiz, Red Cafe & M.O.P.) Dir: James Wade

2008 Can't You Tell?/Ghetto Dir: Wraithe & Mike H

2008 Letter to Obama (feat. Dante Hawkins) Dir: The Sharpshooter

2008 Once Upon A Time (Remix) Sincere & Natty (feat Joell Ortiz) Dir: Carl Allegard

2008 Modern Day Slavery (feat. Immortal Technique) Dir: Carl Allegard

2008 Move On (with Slaughterhouse)

2009 The One (with Slaughterhouse) Dir: Rik Cordero

2009 Watchin Me (D.O.E. feat. Joell Ortiz) Dir: Rob Alphonse

2009 So Much More (feat. Novel & Papoose) Dir: John Colombo

2009 Leyendecker

2009 Piano Lessons (Colin Munroe feat. Joell Ortiz)

2009 Never Sleep (feat. Mr. Probz) Dir: Wraithe

2009 Block Royal Dir: The ICU

2009 Microphone (with Slaughterhouse)

2009 Food For Thought Dir: Court Dunn

2009 How To Change (feat. The Kickdrums) Dir: Rik Cordero

2010 Call Me (feat. Novel)

2010 Nissan Honda Chevy (feat. Jim Jones)

2010 Project Boy Dir: The ICU

2010 We Don't Believe You (feat. Joe Budden & Novel)

2010 Night Train (feat. Novel) Dir: Derek Pike

References

http://www.champmag.com/2010/12/17/video-joell-ortiz-talks-life-after-free-agents-w-champ-mag/

External links

Official website

Official Twitter

Category:1978 births Category:Living people Category:2000s rappers Category:2010s rappers Category:Aftermath Entertainment artists Category:African American rappers Category:Hispanic and Latino American rappers Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Rappers from New York City

Name	David Guetta
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	David Pierre Guetta
Born	November 07, 1967Paris, France
Genre	House, Progressive House, Electro House, Hip House, Dance, French House
Occupation	Producer, DJ
Years active	1984–present| Label = EMI Music France, Virgin
Url

David Pierre Guetta ();was born 7 November 1967 in Paris, France, is a French House music producer and DJ. Originally a DJ at nightclubs during the 1980s and 1990s, he co-founded Gum Productions and released his first album, Just a Little More Love, in 2001. Later, he released Guetta Blaster (2004) and Pop Life (2007). His 2009 album One Love included the hit singles "When Love Takes Over" (featuring Kelly Rowland), "Gettin' Over You" (featuring Chris Willis, Fergie & LMFAO) and "Sexy Bitch" (featuring Akon), the last becoming a top five hit in the US and all three reaching #1 in the UK.

Guetta has sold over three million albums and 15 million singles worldwide. He is currently one of the most sought-after music producers, having worked with a variety of pop and hip-hop artists including Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna, Lil' Wayne, Kylie Minogue, Taio Cruz and Madonna.

Biography

1984–2000: early life and career

At age 17, Guetta began DJ'ing at the Broad Club in Paris. He first played popular songs, and he discovered house music when he heard a Farley Jackmaster Funk track on French radio in 1987. The next year, he began hosting his own club nights. He is married to Cathy Guetta, with whom he has two children.

In the early 1990s, Guetta played in clubs including Le Centrale, the Rex, Le Boy, and Folies Pigalle. Released in 1994,

2001–2006: Just a Little More Love and Guetta Blaster

In 2001, David Guetta along with Joachim Garraud founded Gum Productions, and in the same year Guetta's first hit single, "Just a Little More Love", featuring American singer Chris Willis was released. Willis was vacationing in France when he met Guetta.

2009: One Love and International breakthrough

David Guetta's fourth studio album, One Love, was released on 21 August 2009, and physically released on 24 August 2009 in Europe and 25 August in the United States. Its first single "When Love Takes Over", which featured Kelly Rowland, peaked at #1 on the UK Singles Chart & topped many other countries worldwide becoming a huge summer & dancefloor hit. His second single from the album, "Sexy Bitch" (featuring Akon) became his second #1 in the UK & also topped many countries worldwide becoming his second summer hit. The song "Sexy Bitch" was inspired by Guetta's sexy mother, according to an interview with the DJ in French Vogue, where he also professes his love for Stuart Hay "One Love" featuring Estelle, "Memories" featuring Kid Cudi and "Gettin' Over" featuring Chris Willis, Fergie and LMFAO followed which soon became Guetta's third #1. The album has sold 1.4 million copies worldwide since its release according to Billboard. David Guetta also features in "Club Can't Handle Me" by Flo Rida.

On 16 June 2009, the Black Eyed Peas released the David Guetta-produced "I Gotta Feeling" as their second single from their fifth studio album, The E.N.D.. It became a worldwide hit topping the charts in seventeen countries. It became the most downloaded song in both the United Kingdom, selling more than one million copies, and in the United States, with six million downloads.

Since April 2009, Guetta had his own radio show on the internet radio station RauteMusik on Saturday evening. The show was afterwards moved into Radio 538, being aired every Friday evening after Tiësto's Club Life. Its name is Fuck Me I'm Famous. Guetta performs a one-hour set of house music, presenting mainly new talents inside.

In 2009, he was placed third in the "Top 100 DJs" poll by DJ Magazine, and was elected "Best House DJ" by DJ Awards in 2008.

On 2 December 2009, Guetta received five nominations at the 52nd Grammy Awards. He was nominated twice for his work with the Black Eyed Peas; in the category Record of the Year for "I Gotta Feeling" and Album of the Year for their album The E.N.D.. His song "When Love Takes Over" featuring American R&B; singer Kelly Rowland received two nominations; Best Dance Recording and Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical, and won the latter. Guetta's fourth studio album One Love was nominated as "Best Electronic/Dance Album".

2010–present: collaborations, One More Love and 5th Studio Album

In 2010, David Guetta co-wrote and produced Kelly Rowland's "Commander" from her self-titled third studio album. It peaked at number one on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs chart in the United States, and reached top ten positions in Belgium and the United Kingdom. Guetta has also co-produced "Forever and a Day", which is Kelly's second UK single from her third album. Guetta also produced the singles "Acapella" and "Scream" for American singer-songwriter Kelis's fifth studio album, Flesh Tone, released on 14 May 2010. "Acapella" was released as the lead single on 23 February 2010 and topped the dance charts in the United Kingdom and United States. On 28 June 2010 American rapper Flo Rida released the single "Club Can't Handle Me" featuring David Guetta. The song is included on the soundtrack album to the American 3D dance film Step Up 3D.

After conflicts over whether or not a One Love re-issue should go ahead, it was finally confirmed that Guetta's One Love studio album would be re-released as One More Love. Autumn 2010, David Guetta had announced his new single, titled "Who's that Chick?" featuring Rihanna, will be released from his upcoming studio album, One More Love. The album will be released 29 November, 2010. It will feature Kelly Rowland, Akon, Kid Cudi, will.i.am and Rihanna. David Guetta will be one of the headlining acts at ZoukOut 2010. It will be held in Singapore, on Saturday, 11th December at Siloso Beach, Sentosa Island.

When asked about his fifth album, Guetta announced it would be released in the summer of 2011. The French DJ recently admitted that his new sound is inspired by rock bands such as Kings of Leon and Coldplay: "I might make dance music but that doesn't mean I'm not influenced by bands like Kings of Leon and Coldplay," he told the Daily Star, "Right now I'm planning coming back with a new sound for my next album due out in summer 2011.". Guetta produced Jennifer Lopez' cover of "On The Radio" for her album "Love?" coming out in 2011.

Personal life

David Guetta was born and raised in Montguyon, France. His mother is of Belgian descent while his father was a restaurateur and of Moroccan Jewish descent. He is married to Cathy Guetta and has two children, Tim Elvis Eric (born 2004) and Angie (born 2007).

Discography

Just a Little More Love (2002)

Guetta Blaster (2004)

Pop Life (2007)

One Love (2009)

One More Love (2010)

TBA (2011)

Awards and nominations

{| class=wikitable |- !Year !Award !Category !Nominated work !Result |- ||2006 |rowspan="3"|DJ Awards |Best House DJ | | |- |rowspan="4"|2007 |Best International DJ | | |- |Best Ibiza Night | | |- |World Music Awards |World's Best Selling DJ | | |- |TMF Awards |Best Dance Act | | |- |rowspan="2"|2008 |DJ Awards |Best House DJ | | |- |MTV Europe Music Awards |Best French Act | | |- |rowspan="2"|2009 |DJ Awards |Best House DJ | | |- |DJ Magazine |Top 100 DJs | |Third Place |- |rowspan="9"|2010 |rowspan="4"|Grammy Awards |Best DJ | | |- |Best Producer | | |- |Best Selling French artist | | |- ||NRJ Music Awards | International Album of the Year |One Love | |- |DJ Magazine |Top 100 DJs | |Second Place |}

References

External links

David Guetta Information at Ultra Records

Review of 'Memories' on the Daily Music Guide

|title=David Guetta biography|publisher=Allmusic|author=David Jeffries|accessdate=22 September 2008}}

David Guetta in PACHA NEWS

David Guetta at Billboard.com

Review of 'Gettin Over you' on the Daily Music Guide

Category:1967 births Category:Living people Category:French people of Moroccan descent Category:Club DJs Category:French dance musicians Category:French DJs Category:People from Paris Category:World Music Awards winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:French Jews Category:Sephardi Jews Category:Mizrahi Jews

Name	Jonathan Safran Foer
Caption	Safran Foer at the Brooklyn Book Festival, September 2007
Birthdate	February 21, 1977
Birthplace	Washington, D.C.
Occupation	novelist, short story writer
Nationality
Notable work(s)	Everything is Illuminated
Debut works	Everything Is Illuminated (2002)
Influences	Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Joseph Cornell, Kurt Vonnegut, Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, J. D. Salinger, Homer, Bruno Schulz

Jonathan Safran Foer (born February 21, 1977) is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). In 2009, he published a work of nonfiction entitled Eating Animals.

Early life

Jonathan Safran Foer was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Albert Foer, a lawyer, and Esther Safran Foer, the Polish-born president of a public-relations company. who took an interest in his writing, telling him that he had "that most important of writerly qualities, energy". Foer later recalled that "she was the first person to ever make me think I should try to write in any sort of serious way. And my life really changed after that."

Career

Safran Foer graduated from Princeton in 1999 with a degree in Philosophy, and traveled to Ukraine to expand his thesis. In 2001, he edited the anthology A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell, to which he contributed the short story "If the Aging Magician Should Begin to Believe." His Princeton thesis grew into a novel, Everything Is Illuminated, which was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2002. The book earned him a National Jewish Book Award and a Guardian First Book Award. In 2005, Liev Schreiber wrote and directed a film adaptation of the novel, which starred Elijah Wood.

Safran Foer's second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, was published in 2005. In the novel, Safran Foer used 9/11 as a backdrop for the story of 9-year-old Oskar Schell, who learns how to deal with the death of his father in the World Trade Center. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close used many nontraditional writing techniques known as visual writing. It follows multiple but interconnected storylines, is peppered with photographs of doorknobs and other such oddities, and ends with a 14-page flipbook. Safran Foer's use of these techniques resulted in both glowing praise and excoriation from critics. Despite diverse criticism, the novel sold briskly and was translated into several languages. In addition, the film rights were purchased by Warner Bros. and Paramount for a film to be produced by Scott Rudin, with Billy Elliot and The Reader director Stephen Daldry attached to direct.

In 2005, Safran Foer wrote the libretto for an opera titled Seven Attempted Escapes From Silence, which premiered at the Berlin State Opera on September 14, 2005. Safran Foer has been an occasional vegetarian (some years vegetarian, some years omnivore, occasionally vegan) since the age of 10, Safran Foer said that he had long been "uncertain about how I felt [about eating meat]" and that the birth of his first child inspired "an urgency because I would have to make decisions on his behalf." The book intersperses a personal narrative with a more "broad argument" about vegetarianism. He is currently a professor in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and will publish his third novel, Tree of Codes, in December 2010.

Personal life

In June 2004, Safran Foer married the novelist Nicole Krauss. They live in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York, and have two children. In Spring 2007, Foer stayed at the American Academy in Berlin as a Holtzbrinck Fellow.

Criticism

In spite of his success, Safran Foer is viewed by some as a polarizing figure in modern literature, due to his frequent use of modernist devices, (i.e., time shifts, dialect writing, fanciful mock-history, dramatic prose, poetic devices, and stream of consciousness). Notably, Harry Siegel, when he was still a part of the New York Press, bluntly subtitled an article on Safran Foer, "Why the Author of Everything Is Illuminated is a Fraud and a Hack."

Works

Novels

Everything Is Illuminated (2002)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

Tree of Codes (2010)

Non-fiction books

Eating Animals (2009)

Short stories

"The Very Rigid Search" (excerpted from Everything Is Illuminated) (The New Yorker, June 18, 2001)

"If the Aging Magician Should Begin to Believe" (included in A Convergence of Birds)

"A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease" (The New Yorker, June 10, 2002)

"The Sixth Borough" (became part of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; also featured in the collection "Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creature from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out.")

"Cravings"

"About the Typefaces Not Used in This Edition" (The Guardian, December 2, 2002)

"Room After Room" (included in Granta's Best of Young American Novelists 2,"Granta 97" published in 2007)

"Rhoda" (published in The Book of Other People, 2008)

"Here We Aren't, So Quickly" (The New Yorker, June 14 & 21, 2010)

Other

"Imagining Giovanni's Gift", Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. 20 (Spring 2000)

"The Proximity of Brad to Bradford: A Brief Introduction to the Lifework of Bradford Morrow", Review of Contemporary Fiction Vol. 20 (Spring 2000)

A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by the Work of Joseph Cornell (2001), Editor and contributor

Sock Monkeys: 200 Out of 1,863 (2002), Contributor: "Il Fait Plus Froid Ailleurs"

Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge (2003), Contributor: "The Very Rigid Search"

The Future Dictionary of America (2004), Co-editor, with Dave Eggers, Nicole Krauss, and Eli Horowitz

The Fixer, by Bernard Malamud (2004), Introduction.

Masters of American Comics edited by John Carlin (2005), Contributor: "Breakdownable"

The Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning (2005), collects "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease" and an excerpt from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

"A Beginner's Guide to Hanukkah", The New York Times (December 22, 2005) Op-ed piece

Joe, photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto, designed by Takaaki Matsumoto (2006) Text by Foer

"My Life as a Dog", The New York Times (November 27, 2006) Op-ed piece

The Diary of Petr Ginz, edited by Chava Pressburger (2007), Contributor: "What We Say We Are"

The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories, by Bruno Schultz (Penguin Classics Edition 2008), Forward

"La Vie on Pose", Vogue December 2008

Ron Arad: No Discipline (MoMA 2009), Contributor: "You Look Up Escape Artist"

References

External links

Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Site for Safran Foer's new book

Authortrek page on Safran Foer; includes numerous links to articles, interview and information.

Forward Article Safran Foer working on Passover Haggadah

Who is Augustine? Exploratory site for Jonathan Safran Foer's 'Everything Is Illuminated' (Novel)

Jonathan Safran Foer 'Bookweb' on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.

"Who in the world is JSF?" - interview with the St. Petersburg Times of Tampa Bay, Florida.

Author interview in Guernica Magazine (Guernicamag.com)

"Something happened" - Guardian Unlimited article

"Author Podcast Interview" - interview with Paula Shackleton BookBuffet.com

Category:American Jews Category:American novelists Category:American people of Polish descent Category:American short story writers Category:American vegetarians Category:Jewish novelists Category:Jewish American writers Category:Jewish writers Category:Living people Category:Magic realism writers Category:New York University faculty Category:People from Brooklyn Category:People from Washington, D.C. Category:Princeton University alumni Category:Writers from Washington, D.C. Category:Writers from New York Category:Yale University faculty Category:1977 births Category:21st-century novelists

Name	Joe Budden
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Joseph Budden
Alias
Origin	Jersey City, New Jersey
Label	Amalgam Digital, E1 Music Shady Records
Genre	Hip hop
Occupation	Rapper
Years active	2002–present
Url	Official website
Associated acts	Slaughterhouse, Joell Ortiz, Royce da 5'9", Crooked I

Joe Budden is an American rapper from Jersey City, New Jersey.

Biography

Early life

Born in Harlem, Budden lived in Queens until he was 10 and from there moved to Jersey City, which he still calls home. The middle child of four boys (one older brother and three younger two are twin brothers), Budden heard music in his home (his father is a multi-instrumentalist) and on the streets.

Music career

In the year 2003, Budden released his debut solo studio album, Joe Budden. It included Budden's 2003 Grammy-nominated summer hit "Pump It Up", and was also featured in the soundtrack for the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious and the video games Def Jam Vendetta & Def Jam Fight for NY. The song "Focus" was also featured in the game and Joe Budden was also a character. Its second single was "Fire" featuring Busta Rhymes, which was in the movie Mean Girls. The song "Drop Drop" was featured on the soundtrack for the movie Cradle 2 the Grave. Joe has hinted in many songs that he was a recovering drug addict. Joe has reaffirmed his position as a recovering addict several times through multiple outlets.

After his debut album, Budden's sophomore release titled ‘The Growth’ was hampered due to the label's problems with Joe and his Def Jam seniors not happy with the direction of his music. The production of the album appeared to end up in a development hell and was ultimately not released. Continued disagreements between Budden and Def Jam forced the two sides to part ways. However, Budden managed to release the first and second installments of his Mood Muzik mixtape series while on Def Jam, and the series has been met with critical acclaim.

The forming of Slaughterhouse

Joe Budden reached out to Crooked I, Royce da 5'9", Joell Ortiz and Nino Bless for a track titled "Slaughterhouse" on his digital release, Halfway House. Based on the reception of the track, they decided to form a group, minus Nino Bless, and named it after the first song they made together. The album features production from Alchemist, DJ Khalil, Mr. Porter, Streetrunner, plus guest appearances from Pharoahe Monch, K. Young, and The New Royales. The group signed with Shady Records on January 12th, 2011 because of Joe Budden's ability to persuade Eminem. When they did the track One and Budden's part was not released, Eminem knew he was outshined on the track and decided to cut out his part, due this to, budden decided to file a lawsuit in which the agreement was to sign the group. To this day, Joe Budden is a real American hero and is the reason anyone in slaughterhouse is where they are today. Thank you Joe Budden.

Personal life

Many of Joe Budden's relationships with women have been in the spotlight, including his relationships with model Tahiry and model/singer Somaya Reece. He is currently dating model Esther Baxter.

Budden has also been in the spotlight for his numerous beefs with other rappers including Lupe Fiasco, JBTV RAPPERS, Lil Wayne, C-Money, B-Funny, D-Tummy, P-Dummy, Ransom, Game, Saigon, and an incident involving Wu-Tang member Raekwon.

Discography

;Studio albums

Joe Budden (2003)

Padded Room (2009)

The Great Escape (2011)

;Digital albums

Mood Muzik 3.5 (2007)

Halfway House (2008)

Escape Route (2009)

;with Slaughterhouse

2009: Slaughterhouse

;Official mixtapes

2003: Mood Muzik: The Worst Of Joe Budden

2005:

2007:

2010:

Awards and nominations

Grammy Awards

*2004, Best Male Rap Solo Performance: "Pump It Up" (nominated).

Other awards

*2003 Vibe Next Award (winner).

*United Kingdom, MOBO (Music of Black Origin) Award for "Clubbin" with Marques Houston (nominated).

*United Kingdom, MOBO (Music of Black Origin) Award for Best Rap Performance (nominated).

*2004 Black Reel Award for Best Song from a Movie for "Pump It Up" in 2 Fast 2 Furious (nominated).

References

External links

Official website

Joe Budden on Twitter

Joe Budden on BlogTV

Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Living people Category:2000s rappers Category:2010s rappers Category:African American rappers Category:Def Jam Recordings artists Category:People from Jersey City, New Jersey Category:Rappers from New Jersey Category:Rappers from New York City Category:Underground rappers

Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	Gordon Brown
Honorific-suffix	MP
Alt	Head and shoulders of a smiling man in a suit and striped tie with dark, greying hair and rounded face with square jaw
Caption	Gordon Brown in 2009
Office	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Term start	27 June 2007
Term end	11 May 2010
Predecessor	Tony Blair
Successor	David Cameron
Office2	Leader of the Labour Party
Term start2	24 June 2007
Term end2	11 May 2010
Deputy2	Harriet Harman
Predecessor2	Tony Blair
Successor2	Harriet Harman (acting)
Office3	Chancellor of the Exchequer
Primeminister3	Tony Blair
Term start3	2 May 1997
Term end3	27 June 2007
Predecessor3	Kenneth Clarke
Successor3	Alistair Darling
Office4	Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer
Leader4	John SmithTony Blair
Term start4	18 July 1992
Term end4	2 May 1997
Predecessor4	John Smith
Successor4	Kenneth Clarke
Office5	Shadow Secretary of State for Trade
Leader5	Neil Kinnock
Term start5	13 May 1985
Term end5	18 July 1992
Predecessor5	Robin Cook
Successor5	Margaret Beckett
Constituency mp6	Kirkcaldy and CowdenbeathDunfermline East (1983–2005)
Term start6	9 June 1983
Predecessor6	Willie Hamilton (Central Fife)Dick Douglas (Dunfermline)
Majority6	23,009 (50.2%)
Birth date	February 20, 1951
Birth place	Giffnock, Renfrewshire, Scotland
Party	Labour
Spouse	Sarah Brown(m. 2000–present)
Children	Jennifer Jane (deceased)John MacaulayJames Fraser
Residence	North Queensferry (Private)
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh
Religion	Church of Scotland
Website	www.gordonbrown.org.uk

James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1983, currently for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. He served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007, after the resignation of Tony Blair and three days after becoming leader of the governing Labour Party. Immediately before this, he had served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007. His tenure ended in May 2010, when he resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party.

Brown has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh and spent his early career working as a lecturer at a further education college and a television journalist. He has been a Member of Parliament since 1983; first for Dunfermline East and since 2005 for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. As Prime Minister, he also held the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and the Minister for the Civil Service.

Brown's time as Chancellor was marked by major reform of Britain's monetary and fiscal policy architecture, transferring interest rate setting powers to the Bank of England, by a wide extension of the powers of the Treasury to cover much domestic policy and by transferring responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority. Controversial moves included the abolition of advance corporation tax (ACT) relief in his first budget, and the removal in his final budget of the 10% "starting rate" of personal income tax which he had introduced in 1999.

After initial rises in opinion polls following Brown's selection as leader, Labour performed poorly in local and European election results in 2009. A year later, Labour lost 91 seats in the House of Commons at the 2010 general election, the party's biggest loss of seats in a single general election since 1931, giving the Conservative Party a plurality and resulting in a hung parliament. On 10 May 2010, Brown announced he would stand down as leader of the Labour Party, and instructed the party to put into motion the processes to elect a new leader. and as Leader of the Labour Party by Ed Miliband on 25 September 2010.

Early life and career before Parliament

Gordon Brown was born at the Orchard Maternity Nursing Home in Giffnock, Renfrewshire, Scotland. His father was John Ebenezer Brown, a minister of the Church of Scotland and a strong influence on Brown. He died in December 1998, aged 84. His mother Jessie Elizabeth Souter, known as Bunty, died on 19 September 2004, aged 86. She was the daughter of John Souter, a timber merchant. Brown was brought up with his elder brother John and younger brother Andrew Brown In common with many other notable Scots, he is therefore often referred to as a "son of the manse".

Brown was educated first at Kirkcaldy West Primary School where he was selected for an experimental fast stream education programme, which took him two years early to Kirkcaldy High School for an academic hothouse education taught in separate classes. At age 16 he wrote that he loathed and resented this "ludicrous" experiment on young lives.

He was accepted by the University of Edinburgh to study history at the same early age of 16. During an end-of-term rugby union match at his old school he received a kick to the head and suffered a retinal detachment. This left him blind in his left eye, despite treatment including several operations and weeks spent lying in a darkened room. Later at Edinburgh, while playing tennis, he noticed the same symptoms in his right eye. Brown underwent experimental surgery at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and his eye was saved. Brown graduated from Edinburgh with First Class Honours MA in 1972, and stayed on to complete his PhD (which he gained ten years later in 1982), titled The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918–29. In 1972, while still a student, Brown was elected Rector of the University of Edinburgh, the convener of the University Court. He served as Rector until 1975, and also edited the document The Red Paper on Scotland.

From 1976 to 1980 Brown was employed as a lecturer in Politics at Glasgow College of Technology. In the 1979 general election, he stood for the Edinburgh South constituency, losing to the Conservative candidate, Michael Ancram. He also worked as a tutor for the Open University.

Election to parliament and opposition

Gordon Brown was elected to Parliament on his second attempt as a Labour MP for Dunfermline East in 1983 general election. His first Westminster office mate was a newly elected MP from the Sedgefield constituency by the name of Tony Blair. Brown became opposition spokesman on Trade and Industry in 1985. In 1986, he published a biography of the Independent Labour Party politician James Maxton, the subject of his PhD thesis. Brown was Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 1987 to 1989 and then Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, before becoming Shadow Chancellor in 1992.

After the sudden death of Labour leader John Smith in May 1994, Brown did not contest the leadership after Tony Blair became favourite. It has long been rumoured a deal was struck between Blair and Brown at the former Granita restaurant in Islington, in which Blair promised to give Brown control of economic policy in return for Brown not standing against him in the leadership election. Whether this is true or not, the relationship between Blair and Brown has been central to the fortunes of "New Labour", and they have mostly remained united in public, despite reported serious private rifts.

As Shadow Chancellor, Brown as Chancellor-in-waiting was seen as a good choice by business and the middle class. While he was Chancellor inflation sometimes exceeded the 2% target causing the Governor of the Bank of England to write several letters to the Chancellor, each time inflation exceeded three per cent. In 2005 following a reorganisation of parliamentary constituencies in Scotland, Brown became MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath at the general election.

Chancellor of the Exchequer

/IMF meeting in 2002|alt=Gordon Brown standing at a podium. Text on the podium states "ANNUAL MEETINGS". A number of flags hang in the background]]

In the 1997 general election, Labour defeated the Conservatives by a landslide to end their 18-year exile from government on when Tony Blair, the new prime minister, announced his ministerial team on 2 May 1997, he appointed Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He would remain in this role for 10 years and two months, making him the longest-serving Chancellor in modern history. At the same time he also changed the inflation measure from the Retail Price Index to the Consumer Price Index and transferred responsibility for banking supervision to the Financial Services Authority. Some commentators have argued that this division of responsibilities exacerbated the severity, in Britain, of 2007 global banking crisis.

Taxation and spending

In the 1997 election and subsequently, Brown pledged to not increase the basic or higher rates of income tax. Over his Chancellorship, he reduced the basic rate from 23% to 20%. However, in all but his final budget, Brown increased the tax thresholds in line with inflation, rather than earnings, resulting in fiscal drag. Corporation tax fell under Brown, from a main rate of 33% to 28%, and from 24% to 19% for small businesses. In 1999, he introduced a lower tax band of 10%. He abolished this 10% tax band in his last budget in 2007 to reduce the basic rate from 22% to 20%, increasing tax for 5 million people and, according to the calculations of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, leaving those earning between £5,000 and £18,000 as the biggest losers. According to the OECD UK taxation has increased from a 39.3% share of gross domestic product in 1997 to 42.4% in 2006, going to a higher level than Germany. This increase has mainly been attributed to active government policy, and not simply to the growing economy. Conservatives have accused Brown of imposing "stealth taxes". A commonly reported example resulted in 1997 from a technical change in the way corporation tax is collected, the indirect effect of which was for the dividends on stock investments held within pensions to be taxed, thus lowering pension returns and contributing to the demise of most of the final salary pension funds in the UK. The Treasury contends that this tax change was crucial to long-term economic growth.

Brown's 2000 Spending Review outlined a major expansion of government spending, particularly on health and education. In his April 2002 budget, Brown increased national insurance to pay for health spending. He also introduced working tax credits.

European single currency

In October 1997, Brown took control of the United Kingdom's membership of the European single currency issue by announcing the Treasury would set five economic tests to ascertain whether the economic case had been made. In June 2003 the Treasury indicated the tests had not been passed.

Other issues

In 2000, Brown was accused of starting a political row about higher education (referred to as the Laura Spence Affair) when he accused the University of Oxford of elitism in its admissions procedures, describing its decision not to offer a place to state school pupil Laura Spence as "absolutely outrageous". Lord Jenkins, then Oxford Chancellor and himself a former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, said "nearly every fact he used was false."

Between 1999 and 2002 Brown sold 60% of the UK's gold reserves shortly before gold entered a protracted bull market, since nicknamed by dealers as Brown Bottom. The official reason for selling the gold reserves was to reduce the portfolio risk of the UK's reserves by diversifying away from gold. Since then, the decision to sell the gold has been criticised.

During his time as Chancellor, Brown was reported to believe that it is appropriate to remove much of the unpayable Third World debt, but does not think that all debt should be erased. On 20 April 2006, in a speech to the United Nations Ambassadors, Brown outlined a "Green" view of global development.

Run-up to succeeding Tony Blair

:''Main articles Labour Party leadership election, 2007 and Timeline for the Labour Party leadership elections, 2007

In October 2004, Tony Blair announced he would not lead the party into a fourth general election, but would serve a full third term. Political comment over the relationship between Brown and Blair continued up to and beyond the 2005 election, which Labour won with a reduced parliamentary majority and reduced vote share. Blair announced on 7 September 2006 that he would step down within a year. Brown was the clear favourite to succeed Blair; he was the only candidate spoken of seriously in Westminster. Appearances and news coverage leading up to the handover were interpreted as preparing the ground for Brown to become Prime Minister, in part by creating the impression of a statesman with a vision for leadership and global change. This enabled Brown to signal the most significant priorities for his agenda as Prime Minister; speaking at a Fabian Society conference on 'The Next Decade' in January 2007, he stressed education, international development, narrowing inequalities (to pursue 'equality of opportunity and fairness of outcome'), renewing Britishness, restoring trust in politics, and winning hearts and minds in the war on terror as key priorities.

Prime Minister

Brown ceased to be Chancellor and became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 27 June 2007. Brown was the first prime minister from a Scottish constituency since the Conservative Sir Alec Douglas-Home in 1964. Not all British prime ministers have attended university, but of the ones that did Brown was one of only five that did not attend either Oxford or Cambridge, the others were, the Earl of Bute (Leiden), Lord John Russell (Edinburgh), Andrew Bonar Law (University of Glasgow), and Neville Chamberlain (Mason Science College, later Birmingham). Brown proposed moving some traditional prime ministerial powers conferred by royal prerogative to the realm of Parliament, such as the power to declare war and approve appointments to senior positions. Brown wanted Parliament to gain the right to ratify treaties and have more oversight into the intelligence services. He also proposed moving some powers from Parliament to citizens, including the right to form "citizens' juries", easily petition Parliament for new laws, and rally outside Westminster. He asserted that the attorney general should not have the right to decide whether to prosecute in individual cases, such as in the loans for peerages scandal.

During his Labour leadership campaign Brown proposed some policy initiatives which he called 'The manifesto for change.' The manifesto included a clampdown on corruption and a new Ministerial Code, which set out clear standards of behaviour for ministers. Brown also stated in a speech when announcing his bid that he wants a "better constitution" that is "clear about the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen in Britain today". He planned to set up an all-party convention to look at new powers for Parliament and to look at rebalancing powers between Whitehall and local government. Brown said he would give Parliament the final say on whether British troops are sent into action in future. Brown said he wanted to release more land and ease access to ownership with shared equity schemes. He backed a proposal to build new eco-towns, each housing between 10,000 and 20,000 home-owners — up to 100,000 new homes in total. Brown also said he wanted to have doctors' surgeries open at the weekends, and GPs on call in the evenings. Doctors were given the right of opting out of out-of-hours care in 2007, under a controversial pay deal, signed by then-Health Secretary John Reid, which awarded them a 22% pay rise in 2006. Brown also stated in the manifesto that the NHS was his top priority. There was speculation during September and early October 2007 about whether Brown would call a snap general election. Brown announced that there would be no election in the near future and seemed to rule out an election in 2008. His political opponents accused him of being indecisive, which Brown denied. In July 2008 Brown supported a new bill extending this pre-charge detention period to 42 days. The bill was met with opposition on both sides of the House and backbench rebellion. In the end the bill passed by just 9 votes. The House of Lords defeated the bill, with Lords characterising it as "fatally flawed, ill thought through and unnecessary", stating that "it seeks to further erode fundamental legal and civil rights".

Brown was mentioned by the press in the expenses crisis for claiming for the payment of his cleaner. However, no wrongdoing was found and the Commons Authority did not pursue Brown over the claim. Meanwhile, the Commons Fees Office stated that a double payment for a £153 plumbing repair bill was a mistake on their part and that Brown had repaid it in full.

Foreign policy

in the White House]] Brown was committed to the Iraq War, but said in a speech in June 2007 that he would "learn the lessons" from the mistakes made in Iraq. Brown said in a letter published on 17 March 2008 that the United Kingdom will hold an inquiry into the Iraq war.

Brown has gone to great lengths to empathise with those who lost family members in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. He has often said "War is tragic", echoing Blair's memorable quote that "War is horrible". Nonetheless, in November 2007 Brown was accused by some senior military figures of not adhering to the 'military covenant', a convention within British politics stating that in exchange for them putting their lives at risk for the sake of national security, the armed forces should in turn be suitably looked after by the government.

Brown skipped the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics, on 8 August 2008 in Beijing. He attended the closing ceremony instead, on 24 August 2008. Brown had been under intense pressure from human rights campaigners to send a message to China, concerning the 2008 Tibetan unrest. His decision not to attend the opening ceremony was not an act of protest, rather made several weeks in advance and not intended as a stand on principle.

In a speech in July 2007, Brown personally clarified his position regarding Britain's relationship with the USA "We will not allow people to separate us from the United States of America in dealing with the common challenges that we face around the world. I think people have got to remember that the relationship between Britain and America and between a British prime minister and an American president is built on the things that we share, the same enduring values about the importance of liberty, opportunity, the dignity of the individual. I will continue to work, as Tony Blair did, very closely with the American administration."

Brown and the Labour party had pledged to allow a referendum on the EU Treaty of Lisbon. On the morning of 13 December 2007, Foreign Secretary David Miliband attended for the Prime Minister at the official signing ceremony in Lisbon of the EU Reform Treaty. Brown's opponents on both sides of the House, and in the press, suggested that ratification by Parliament was not enough and that a referendum should also be held. Labour's 2005 manifesto had pledged to give British public a referendum on the original EU Constitution. Brown argued that the Treaty significantly differed from the Constitution, and as such did not require a referendum. He also responded with plans for a lengthy debate on the topic, and stated that he believed the document to be too complex to be decided by referendum.

Drug policy

During Brown's premiership, in October 2008, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) recommended to the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith that cannabis remain classified as a Class C drug. Acting against the advice of the Council, she chose to reclassify it as class B. Following his resignation, Professor Nutt said Gordon Brown had "made up his mind" to reclassify cannabis despite evidence to the contrary. Gordon Brown had argued, "I don't think that the previous studies took into account that so much of the cannabis on the streets is now of a lethal quality and we really have got to send out a message to young people – this is not acceptable". Professor Nutts predecessor at the ACMD, Sir Michael Rawlins, later said, "Governments may well have good reasons for taking an alternative view... When that happens, then the government should explain why it's ignoring the particular advice".

Global recession

Brown's premiership coincided with the global recession, during which the United Kingdom led calls for fiscal action to stimulate aggregate demand. Domestically, Brown's administration introduced a range of measures including a bank rescue package worth around £500 billion (approximately $850 billion), a temporary 2.5% cut in Value Added Tax (Sales Tax) and a "car scrappage" scheme.

Plots against leadership

In mid-2008, Brown's leadership was presented with a challenge as some MPs openly called for him to resign. This event was dubbed the 'Lancashire Plot', as two backbenchers from (pre-1974) Lancashire urged him to step down and a third questioned his chances of holding on to the Labour Party leadership. Several MPs argued that if Brown did not recover in the polls by early 2009, he should call for a leadership contest. However, certain prominent MPs, such as Jacqui Smith and Bill Rammell, suggested that Brown was the right person to lead Britain through its economic crisis. In the Autumn, Siobhain McDonagh, a MP and junior government whip, who during her time in office had never voted against the government, spoke of the need for discussion over Brown's position. McDonagh was sacked from her role shortly afterwards, on 12 September. Whilst McDonagh did not state that she wanted Brown deposed, she implored the Labour party to hold a leadership election, she was sacked from her role shortly afterwards. McDonagh was supported by Joan Ryan (who applied, as McDonagh had, for leadership nomination papers, and became the second rebel to be fired from her job), Jim Dowd, Greg Pope, and a string of others who had previously held positions in government, made clear their desire for a contest. In the face of this speculation over Brown's future, his ministers backed him to lead the party, and Harriet Harman and David Miliband denied that they were preparing leadership bids. After Labour lost the Glasgow East by-election in July, Harman, the deputy leader of the party, said that Brown was the "solution", not the "problem"; Home Secretary Smith, Justice Secretary Jack Straw, Schools Secretary Ed Balls and Cabinet Office Minister Ed Miliband all re-affirmed their support for Brown. The deputy Prime Minister under Blair, John Prescott, also pledged his support. Foreign Secretary David Miliband then denied that he was plotting a leadership bid, when on 30 July, an article written by him in The Guardian was interpreted by a large number in the media as an attempt to undermine Brown. In the article, Miliband outlined the party's future, but neglected to mention the Prime Minister. Miliband, responded to this by saying that he was confident Brown could lead Labour to victory in the next general election, and that his article was an attack against the fatalism in the party since the loss of Glasgow-East. Miliband continued to show his support for Brown in the face of the challenge that emerged in September, as did Business Secretary John Hutton, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, and Chief Whip Geoff Hoon.

On 6 January 2010, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon jointly called for a secret ballot on the future of Brown's leadership. The call received little support and the following day Hoon said that it appeared to have failed and was "over". Brown later referred to the call for a secret ballot as a "form of silliness".

By-elections and 2009 local and European elections

in 2006|alt=Gordon Brown shakes hands with Vladimir Putin]] In the local elections on 1 May 2008, Labour suffered their worst results in 40 years finishing in third place with a projected 24% share of the national vote. Subsequently the party has seen the loss of by-elections in Nantwich and Crewe and Henley as well as slumps in the polls. A by-election in Glasgow East triggered by the resignation of David Marshall saw the Labour party struggle to appoint a candidate, eventually settling for Margaret Curran, a sitting MSP in the Scottish Parliament. The SNP, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have all derided the party for their disorganised nature with Alex Salmond commenting "This is their 'lost weekend' – they don't have a leader in Scotland, they don't have a candidate in Glasgow East, and they have a prime minister who refuses to come to the constituency". Labour lost the constituency to the Scottish National Party's John Mason who took 11,277 votes with Labour just 365 behind. The seat experienced a swing of 22.54%.

In the European elections, Labour polled 16% of the vote, finishing in third place behind the Conservatives and United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). Voter apathy was reflected in the historically low turnout of around thirty three percent. In Scotland voter turnout was only twenty eight per cent. In the local elections, Labour polled 23% of the vote, finishing in third place behind Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, with Labour losing control of the four councils it had held prior to the election. In a vote widely considered to be a reaction to the expenses scandal, the share of the votes was down for all the major parties; Labour was down one percent, the Conservative share was down five percent. The beneficiary of the public backlash was generally seen to be the minor parties, including the Green Party and UKIP. These results were Labour's worst since World War II. Gordon Brown was quoted in the press as having said that the results were "a painful defeat for Labour", and that "too many good people doing so much good for their communities and their constituencies have lost through no fault of their own."

General election 2010

the day before the 2010 Election.]] In April 2010, Brown asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call new elections, which included the first televised leadership debates in British History. The result of the election was a hung parliament.

Brown was re-elected to serve as MP for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath constituency on 6 May 2010 with 29,559 votes representing 64.5% of votes. The following day, negotiations between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats failed. During the evening, Brown visited Buckingham Palace to tender his resignation as Prime Minister to Queen Elizabeth II and to recommend that she invite the Leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, to form a government. He resigned as leader of the Labour Party with immediate effect.

World Wide Web Foundation

Sir Tim Berners-Lee worked with the UK government during Brown's premiership to publish government data as freely as possible on the internet in the data.gov.uk project. Sir Tim subsequently invited Brown to become a board director of the World Wide Web Foundation to "advise the Web Foundation on ways to involve disadvantaged communities and global leaders in the development of sustainable programs that connect humanity and affect positive change".

Depictions in popular culture

In keeping with its tradition of having a comic strip for every Prime Minister Private Eye featured a comic strip, The Broonites (a parody of The Broons), parodying Brown's government. Private Eye also had a column titled Prime Ministerial Decree, a parody of statements that would be issued by Communist governments in the former Eastern Bloc.

Brown was depicted in Season 13 of South Park when world leaders plot to steal money from aliens in order to deal with the global recession, in the episode "Pinewood Derby". He also makes an appearance in the first issue of Marvel Comics' , overseeing Britain's response to the Skrull invasion of Earth.

Personal life and family

Brown's early girlfriends included the journalist Sheena McDonald and Princess Margarita, the eldest daughter of exiled King Michael of Romania. On 28 December 2001 a daughter, Jennifer Jane, was born prematurely and died on 7 January 2002 one day after suffering a brain haemorrhage. They currently have two children, John Macaulay and James Fraser. In November 2006, James Fraser was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

Gordon Brown commented at the time that their recent experiences had changed him and his wife. Sarah Brown rarely makes official appearances either with or without her husband. She is inevitably much sought after to give interviews. She is, however, patron of several charities and has written articles for national newspapers related to this. At the 2008 Labour Party Conference, Sarah caused surprise by taking to the stage to introduce her husband for his keynote address. Since then, her public profile has increased.

He has two brothers, John Brown and Andrew Brown. Andrew has been Head of Media Relations in the UK for the French-owned utility company EDF Energy since 2004. Whilst PM he spent some of his spare time at Chequers, the house often being filled with friends. They have also entertained local dignitaries like Sir Leonard Figg. Brown is also a friend of Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, who says of Brown "I know him as affable, funny and gregarious, a great listener, a kind and loyal friend."

Religion

The son of a Church of Scotland minister, Brown has talked about what he called his "moral compass" and to his parents being his "inspiration". He is seemingly keen to keep his religion a private matter. According to the Guardian, he is a member of the Church of Scotland.

In April 2009, Brown gave what was the first ever speech by a serving Prime Minister at St Paul's Cathedral in London. He referred to a 'single powerful modern sense demanding responsibility from all and fairness to all'. He also talked about the Christian doctrine of 'do to others what you would have them do unto you', which he compared to similar principles in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. He went on, 'They each and all reflect a sense that we share the pain of others, and a sense that we believe in something bigger than ourselves—that we cannot be truly content while others face despair, cannot be completely at ease while others live in fear, cannot be satisfied while others are in sorrow", and continued, "We all feel, regardless of the source of our philosophy, the same deep moral sense that each of us is our brother and sisters' keeper... We cannot and will not pass by on the other side when people are suffering and when we have it within our power to help.'

Socialism

Brown first thought of himself as being 'Labour' and his sense of social injustice was roused when he accompanied his father on visits around Kirkcaldy seeing the pain of unemployment and the misery of poverty and squalor as the mining and textile industries collapsed. Growing up he discovered Tawney, Tressell, Cole and other socialist texts which inspired him. He also found inspiration in Blake in poetry, Potter in drama, Lawrence in literature and the socialist leader James Maxton in Scottish history. These, he argues, fuelled his passion and activism, reinforcing his own political experience. For Brown the ethical basis of British socialism has several themes: the view that individuals are not primarily self-centered but are co-operative, that people are more likely to thrive in communities in which they play a full role and that people have talents and potential that the free market will not allow them to fully realise. In addition, one of the most enduring of Brown's themes is the commitment to equality.

Titles, honours, and awards

Styles

Mr James Gordon Brown (1951–1982)

Dr James Gordon Brown (1982–1983) The Rt Hon. Dr James Gordon Brown MP (1996–present)

Honours

In March 2009 Brown was named World Statesman of the Year by the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, an American organisation dedicated to promoting peace, human rights and understanding between religious faiths. The award was presented by Rabbi Arthur Schneier who praised Brown's "compassionate leadership in dealing with the challenging issues facing humanity, his commitment to freedom, human dignity and the environment, and for the major role he has played in helping to stabilize the world's financial system".

As a former Prime Minister, Brown may be appointed to the Order of the Garter after leaving public life. However, because of his Scottish ancestry, it has also been considered that he may more appropriately be appointed to the Order of the Thistle, as was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister from 1963–64.

Publications

See also

UK general elections: 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2001, 2005, 2010

References

Further reading

;Biographies

External links

Gordon Brown Official government profile

Gordon Brown at Encyclopædia Britannica

Tour diary: Gordon Brown in Africa BBC News, January 2005 trip about his 'Marshall plan for Africa'

;Speeches

Transcript of Gordon Brown's acceptance speech ePolitix, 17 May 2007

Transcript of first speech as Labour Party Leader ePolitix, 24 June 2007

Address to the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly September 2008

Manifesto speech transcript ePolitix, 12 April 2010

|- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- |- ! colspan="3" style="background:#cfc;" | Order of precedence in Northern Ireland

Category:1951 births Category:Academics of Glasgow Caledonian University Category:Academics of the Open University Category:Alumni of Kirkcaldy High School Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Category:Chancellors of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom Category:Commission for Africa members Category:Labour Party (UK) MPs Category:Leaders of the Labour Party (UK) Category:Living people Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Fife constituencies Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Scottish constituencies Category:People associated with the campaign for Scottish devolution Category:People from Kirkcaldy Category:People from Renfrewshire Category:Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom Category:Rectors of the University of Edinburgh Category:Scottish journalists Category:Scottish Labour Party politicians Category:Scottish Presbyterians Category:Scottish scholars and academics Category:UK MPs 1983–1987 Category:UK MPs 1987–1992 Category:UK MPs 1992–1997 Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:UK MPs 2010– Category:Youth rights individuals