THE NOVEL: A BIOGRAPHY
The Novel: a biography
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014
The 700-year history of the novel in English defies straightforward telling. Geographically and culturally boundless, with contributions from Great Britain, Ireland, America, Canada, Australia, India, the Caribbean, and Southern Africa; influenced by great novelists working in other languages and encompassing a range of genres, the story of the novel in English unfolds like a richly varied landscape that invites exploration.
‘While the book is arranged chronologically, the chapters are theme-based (e.g. The Human Comedy, Teller and Tale, Sex and Sensibility) and follow no specific outline, blending author biographies, interviews, reviews, and criticism into fluid narratives. […] This is a compelling edition for writers and other readers alike; a portrayal that is aligned with Edwin Muir’s belief that the only thing which can tell us about the novel is the novel.’
– Annalisa Pesek, Library Journal
‘Take a breath, clear the week, turn off the WiFi, and throw yourself in […] The book, at its heart, is a long conversation about craft. The terms of discourse aren’t the classroom shibboleths of plot, character, and theme, but language, form, and address. Here is where we feel the force of Schmidt’s experience as an editor and a publisher as well as a novelist. […] The Novel isn’t just a marvelous account of what the form can do; it is also a record, in the figure who appears in its pages, of what it can do to us.’
– William Deresiewicz, The Atlantic
‘The Novel: A Biography is a marvel of sustained attention, responsiveness, tolerance and intelligence. Schmidt […] treats the novel, in its sprawling or neat forms, as a natural phenomenon, to be honoured and tabulated in all its diversity; but he refuses to clamp a measure on what deserves the title or best merits it. He is as close to omnivorous as a man of decided taste can be.’
– Frederick Raphael, Literary Review