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J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger (born January 1, 1919) is an American author best known for The Catcher in the Rye, a classic coming-of-age novel that has enjoyed enduring popularity since its publication in 1951. A major theme in Salinger's work is the agile and powerful mind of disturbed young men, and the redemptive capacity of children in the lives of such men. Salinger is also known for his reclusive nature because he has not given an interview, made a public appearance or published any new work in the last forty years.

Life

Salinger was born in New York City to a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother (although he did not find out that his mother wasn't Jewish until he was in his late teens). His father Sol was a meat importer; as a teenager Sonny, as he was known then, went on a trip to Poland to see the family business first-hand. His revulsion led to an estrangement with his father, whom he rarely spoke to as an adult. He attended Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, upon which Pencey Prep in The Catcher in the Rye is based. While attending Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Salinger was called "the worst English student in the history of the College" by one of his professors. Having failed to graduate from several schools, Salinger attended a Columbia University writing class in 1939. The teacher was Whit Burnett, longtime editor of Story Magazine, and during the second semester of the class he saw some degree of talent in the young author. In the March-April 1940 issue of Story Burnett published Salinger's debut short story, a vignette of several aimless youths entitled The Young Folks. Burnett and Salinger would correspond for several years after, although a mix-up involving the proposed publication of a short story collection, also entitled The Young Folks, would leave them estranged. He served in the Army during World War II, where he saw combat action with the U.S. 4th Infantry Division in some of the fiercest fighting of the war. This perhaps scarred him emotionally (he was hospitalized for combat stress reaction), and it is likely that he drew upon his wartime experiences in several stories, such as For Esmé with Love and Squalor, which is narrated by a traumatized soldier. He continued to publish stories in magazines such as Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post during and after his war experience. By 1948, with the publication of a critically-acclaimed short story entitled A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Salinger began to publish almost exclusively in the New Yorker, a magazine he greatly admired. "Bananafish" was one of the most popular stories ever published in the magazine, and he quickly became one of their best-known authors. However, it wasn't his first experience with the magazine; in 1942 Salinger had received his first acceptance from the New Yorker. It was for a story entitled "Slight Rebellion off Madison", which featured a semi-autobiographical character named Holden Caulfield. The story, however, was held from publication until 1946 because of the war. The story was related to several others featuring the Caulfield family, but perspective shifted from older brother Vince to Holden. Salinger had confided to several people that he felt Holden deserved a novel, and The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951. It was an immediate success, although early critical reactions were mixed. Although never confirmed by Salinger himself, several of the events in the novel are semi-autobiographical. A novel driven by the nuanced, intricate character of Holden, the plot is quite simple. The book became famous for Salinger's extensive and exceptional eye for subtle complexity, detail, and description, for its ironic humor, and for the depressing and desperate atmosphere of New York City. The novel was banned in some countries because of its bold and offensive use of language; "goddam" appears at least every other page. The book is still widely read, particularly in the United States, where it is considered an especially authoritative depiction of teenage angst. In 1953 Salinger published a collection of seven short stories published in the New Yorker (Bananafish among them), as well as two that they had rejected. The collection was published as Nine Stories in the United States, and For Esmé -- With Love and Squalor in the UK (after one of the most beloved stories.) It was also very successful, although Salinger had already begun to tightly regulate the publicity allowed the book, and the decoration of the dust jacket. Salinger later published Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters and Seymour -- An Introduction which appeared in 1963). Both were compilations of related short stories, originally published in the New Yorker.

Seclusion

After the notoriety of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger gradually withdrew into himself. In 1953 he moved from New York to Cornish, New Hampshire. Early in his time in Cornish he was relatively sociable, particularly with the high school kids who treated him as one of their own. After an interview for the high school newspaper ended up in the city paper instead, he withdrew from them entirely and was seen less frequently around the town as a whole, only seeing his close friend jurist Learned Hand regularly. According to biographer Ian Hamilton this event left Salinger feeling betrayed. His last published work was Hapworth 16, 1924, an epistolary novella that was published in the New Yorker in June, 1965. It's said that, on several occasions in the 1970s, he was on the verge of publishing another work but decided against it at the last minute. In 1978 it was reported in Newsweek that, while attending a banquet in an army friend's honor, he said he had recently finished "a long, romantic book set in World War II", but nothing ever became of it. Salinger tried to escape public exposure and attention as much as possible ("A writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him", he wrote.) But he constantly struggled with the unwanted attention he got as a cult figure. On learning of British writer Ian Hamilton's intention to publish J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life, a biography including letters Salinger had written to other authors and friends, Salinger sued to stop the book's publication. The book was finally published with the letters' contents paraphrased; the court ruled that though a person may own a letter physically, the language within it belongs to the author. An unintended result of the lawsuit was that many details of Salinger's private life, including that he had written two novels and many stories but left them unpublished, became public in the form of court transcripts. He has been a life long student of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. This has been described at length by Som P. Ranchan in his book An Adventure in Vedanta: J.D. Salinger's the Glass Family (1990). His daughter said in 2000 that he at one time pursued Scientology. [http://partners.nytimes.com/library/books/083000salinger-daughter.html] In a surprising move, Salinger gave small publisher Orchises Press permission to publish Hapworth 16, 1924, a previously uncollected novella; it was to be published in 1997, and listings for it appeared on Amazon.com and other book-sellers. However, the date was pushed back a number of times, and its last publication date was set in 2002. In 2000 his daughter, Margaret Salinger, by his second wife Claire Douglas, published Dream Catcher: A Memoir. In her "tell-all" book, Ms. Salinger stated that her father drank his own urine, spoke in tongues, rarely had sex with her mother, kept her "a virtual prisoner" and refused to allow her to see friends or relatives. He is the father of actor Matt Salinger, most famous for starring in a direct-to-video version of Captain America. Salinger himself refuses to allow any of his works to be involved with film; he has not licensed any of his stories or novels since Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut (released as [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041672/ My Foolish Heart]), which he reportedly detested. Assuming that Salinger refuses to allow his works to be adapted to film in his lifetime, his major works Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey will likely never be adapted until 2046 and 2056 respectively, when they enter public domain. A year-long affair in 1972 with eighteen-year old aspiring writer Joyce Maynard also became the source of controversy when she put his letters to her up for auction. Software developer Peter Norton bought the letters for $156,000 and announced his intention to return them to Salinger. In 2002, more than 80 letters from writers, critics and fans to Mr. Salinger were published in the book Letters to J. D. Salinger, edited by Chris Kubica.

Works

The top level of the outline provides the dates the books were published, and the lower level provides the dates the individual stories were originally published. Uncollected stories are provided at the bottom. Many of his stories involved the Glass Family or Holden Caulfield. These are indicated below.

Published and collected

- The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Holden Caulfield
- Nine Stories (1953) [http://www.geocities.com/deadcaulfields/Nine.html Summarized here]
- A Perfect Day for Bananafish (1948) Glass Family - (Seymour's suicide)
- Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut (1948) Glass Family - (Explains Walt's death)
- Just Before the War with the Eskimos (1948)
- The Laughing Man (1949)
- Down at the Dinghy (1949) Glass Family (Boo Boo Glass)
- For Esmé with Love and Squalor (1950)
- Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes (1951)
- De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period (1952) -- only story rejected by The New Yorker after he started writing for them
- Teddy (1953) Glass Family
- Franny and Zooey (1961)
- Franny (1955) Glass Family
- Zooey (1957) Glass Family
- Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)
- Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters (1955) - Glass Family - Seymour's wedding day
- Seymour -- An Introduction (1959) Glass Family - Buddy's biography of Seymour
- Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorkers. Ed: David Remnick (2000)
- Slight Rebellion Off Madison (1946) Holden Caulfield

Published and uncollected

- The Young Folks (1940)
- Go See Eddie (1940)
- The Hang of It (1941)
- The Heart of a Broken Story (1941)
- The Long Debut of Lois Taggett (1942)
- Personal Notes on an Infantryman (1942)
- The Varioni Brothers (1943)
- Both Parties Concerned (1944)
- Soft Boiled Sergeant (1944)
- Last Day of the Last Furlough (1944) Holden Caulfield
- Once a Week Won't Kill You (1944)
- A Boy in France (1945)
- Elaine (1945)
- This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise (1945) Holden Caulfield
- The Stranger (1945)
- I'm Crazy (1945) Holden Caulfield
- A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All (1947)
- The Inverted Forest (1947)
- A Girl I Knew (1948)
- Blue Melody (1948)
- Hapworth 16, 1924 (1965) Glass Family - A letter from Seymour about Buddy, last known Salinger work See [http://www.geocities.com/deadcaulfields/UncollectedList.html]

Unpublished and uncollected

At Princeton Library

- The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls [http://www.geocities.com/deadcaulfields/BowlingBalls.html] (date unknown) Holden Caulfield
- The Last and Best of the Peter Pans [http://www.geocities.com/deadcaulfields/PeterPans.html] (date unknown) Holden Caulfield
- The Magic Foxhole (1945)
- Two Lonely Men (1944)
- The Children's Echelon (1944) See [http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/05-00/05-21-00/e01li152.htm][http://www.geocities.com/deadcaulfields/Unpublished.html]

External links

- [http://lists.bway.net/listinfo/bananafish/ The J. D. Salinger "Bananafish" Discussion List.]
- [http://www.jdsalinger.com/ The Letters to J.D. Salinger book]
- [http://www.tversu.ru/Science/Hermeneutics/1998-2/1998-2-28-eng.pdf Implied meanings in J.D. Salinger stories and reverting (English Pdf)] (from http://www.tversu.ru/Science/Hermeneutics/1998-2.html )
- [http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/ Uncollected Writings]
- [http://www.salinger.org/ Salinger.org - A Fan site]
- [http://www.geocities.com/deadcaulfields/ Dead Caulfields. The early life and work of J.D. Salinger]
- [http://www.levity.com/corduroy/salinger1.htm The Praises and Criticisms of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye by Eric Lomazoff]
- [http://wiredforbooks.org/ianhamilton/ 1988 Audio Interview with Ian Hamilton, author of In Search of J. D. Salinger - RealAudio] Salinger, J. D. Salinger, J. D. Salinger, J. D. Salinger, J. D. Salinger, J. D. Salinger, J.D. Salinger, J.D. Salinger, J.D. Salinger, J.D. Salinger, J. D. ja:J・D・サリンジャー

1919

1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar).

Events

January

- January 1 - Iolaire sinking disaster
- January 1 - Edsel Ford succeeds his father as head of the Ford Motor Company
- January 5 - Spartacist uprising - Socialist demonstrations in Berlin turn into attempted communist revolution
- January 9 - Spartacus revolutionary council folds – Friedrich Ebert orders Freikorps into action
- January 10-January 12 - Freikorps attack Spartacus supporters around Berlin
- January 11 - Romania annexes Transylvania.
- January 13 - Worker’s councils in Berlin end the general strike - Spartacus week is over
- January 15 - Murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in the aftermath of Spartacus uprising
- January 15 - The Boston Molasses Disaster: Wave of molasses sweeps through Boston, killing 21 and injuring 150
- January 15 - Ignacy Jan Paderewski becomes Premier of Poland
- January 16 - The 18th Amendment, authorizing Prohibition, goes into effect in the United States
- January 18 - World War I: A peace conference opens in Versailles, France.
- January 18 - Bentley Motors is founded
- January 21 - the First Dáil Éireann meets in the Mansion House in Dublin. It is from this meeting that the Irish state dates its existence.
- January 25 - The League of Nations is founded

February-April

- February 1 - The first Miss America is crowned (New York City).
- February 3 - Soviet troops occupy Ukraine
- February 11 - Friedrich Ebert (SPD), is elected President of Germany.
- February 14 - Polish-Soviet War begins
- February 25 - Oregon places a 1 cent per US gallon (26 ¢/L) tax on gasoline, becoming the first U.S. state to levy a gasoline tax.
- February 26 - An act of the United States Congress establishes most of the Grand Canyon as a United States National Park (see Grand Canyon National Park).
- March 1 - March 1st Movement against Japanese colonial rule in Korea.
- March 2 - The first Communist International meets in Moscow
- March 15 - The American Legion forms in Paris
- March 21 - The Chinese High School was established in Singapore by Mr. Tan Kah Kee
- March 23 - In Milan, Italy, Benito Mussolini founds his Fascist political movement.
- March 31 - General strike begins in the Ruhr
- April 6-April 7 - Communist People’s Republic of Munich founded
- April 13 - At the Amritsar Massacre, British and Gurkha troops massacre 379 Indians.
- April 14 - Emperor of Austria moves to exile in Switzerland
- April 25 - Bauhaus movement founded
- April 25 - ANZAC day is celebrated for the first time in Australia.
- April 25 - Pancho Villa takes Parral in Mexico - hangs mayor and his two sons

May-June

- May 1 - Large left-wing demonstration in France leads to a violent confrontation with the police
- May 1 - Weimar Republic troops and Freikorps take over Munich and crush the Soviet Republic of Bavaria
- May 1 - The May Day Riots break out in Cleveland, Ohio – two people killed, forty injured, and one hundred and sixteen arrested
- May 3 - People's Republic of Munich is crushed
- May 4 - May Fourth Movement opposes foreign colonizers in China
- May 15 - Winnipeg launches general strike for better wages and working conditions.
- May 16 - US Navy Naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read departs Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight
- May 17 - Committee of One Thousand forms to oppose Winnipeg General Strike
- May 23 - The University of California opens it second campus in Los Angeles. Initially called Southern Branch of the University of California (SBUC), it is eventually renamed the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
- May 25 - Volcano Kelut erupts in Java – 16.000 dead
- May 29 - Einstein's theory of general relativity confirmed by Arthur Eddington's observation of a total eclipse of the Sun.
- June 4 - Women's rights: The United States Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would guarantee suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.
- June 14 - John Alcock and Arthur Brown depart St. John's, Newfoundland on the first nonstop transatlantic flight (they landed at Clifden, County Galway, Ireland the next day). [http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/alcock.htm]
- June 15 - Pancho Villa attacks Ciudad Juarez. When the bullets begin to fly to the US side of the border, 2 units of the US 7th Cavalry regiment cross the border and repulse Villa's forces
- June 21 - Royal Canadian Mounted Police fire a volley into a crowd of unemployed war veterans, killing two, during Winnipeg General Strike.
- June 21 - Admiral Ludvig von Reuter scuttles the German fleet in Scapa Flow, Orkney. The nine sailors killed were the last casualties of the First World War.
- June 28 - The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending World War I with Germany.

July-November

- July 6 - The British dirigible R-34 lands in New York, completing the first crossing of the Atlantic by an airship.
- July 31 - Strike of policemen in London and Liverpool for recognition of the National Union of Police and Prison Officers. Over 2,000 strikers are dismissed.
- August 11 - In Germany, the Weimar Constitution is passed into law.
- August 19 - Afghanistan gains independence from the United Kingdom.
- 16 August-26 August - First Silesian Uprising, the Poles in Upper Silesia rise against the Germans
- August 31 - American Communist Party is established
- September 10 - Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed, ending World War I with Austria.
- September 10-September 15: The Florida Keys Hurricane kills 600 in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida and Texas.
- September 23 - Belenenses is founded.
- September 27 - Last British troops leave Archangel, Russia and leave fighting to the Russians
- September 28 - Omaha Riot - lynch mob besieges the police station and courthouse in Omaha, Nebraska and lynch alleged black rapist Will Brown
- October 1 - Elaine Race Riot breaks out in Arkansas
- October 2 - US President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed.
- October 9 - Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds "win" the World Series.
- October 9 - Boston police strike
- October 13 - Convention relating to the Regulation of Aerial Navigation signed.
- October 28 - Prohibition begins: The United States Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto.
- November - At end of month health officials declare the global Spanish Flu Pandemic over
- November 10 - The first national convention of the American Legion is held in Minneapolis, Minnesota (convention ended on November 12).
- November 11 - The Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington results the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the IWW.
- November 16 - Admiral Horthy conquers Budapest from Bela Kuns Soviet Republic
- November 27 - The Treaty of Neuilly is signed between Allies and Bulgaria.
- November 28 - The American-born Lady Astor is elected to the British House of Commons, becoming the first female MP to take a seat on December 1.

December

- December 5 - Turkish ministry of war releases Greeks, Armenians and Jews from military service
- December 12 - Gabriele D'Annunzio with his entourage marches into Fiume and convinces the Italian troops to join him
- December 30 - Lincoln's Inn, in London admits its first female bar student.
- The Paris Peace Conference

Unknown dates

- The Åland Islands vote for a return to Swedish rule in a referendum.
- Les Champs Magnetiques, the first automatic book, is written by Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault.
- XWA (now CFCF), in Montreal, Quebec, is the first public radio station in North America to go on the air.
- Various strikes in USA: Strike of US railroad workers; Longshoreman’s strike; The Great Steel Strike; General strike in Seattle, Washington.
- Female suffrage in Germany and Luxembourg
- Henri Desire Landru captured
- Marcel Tolkowsky's Diamond Design is published.
- The International Astronomical Union is founded.
- World League Against Alcoholism established by Anti-Saloon League.

Births

- Langdon Brown Gilkey - American Christian Protestant Ecumenical theologian (d. 2004)

January-April

- January 1 - J. D. Salinger, American novelist
- January 13 - Robert Stack, American actor (d. 2003)
- January 14 - Andy Rooney, American journalist
- January 23 - Hans Hass, Austrian zoologist
- January 23 - Ernie Kovacs, American comedian (d. 1962)
- January 25 - Edwin Newman, American journalist and writer
- January 26 - Valentino Mazzola, Italian footballer (d. 1949)
- January 27 - Ross Bagdasarian, American musician and actor (d. 1972)
- January 31 - Jackie Robinson, baseball player (d. 1972)
- February 5 - Red Buttons, American actor
- February 5 - Andreas Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece (d. 1996)
- February 11 - Eva Gabor, Hungarian actress (d. 1995)
- February 11 - Eddie Robinson, American football coach
- February 12 - Forrest Tucker, American actor (d. 1986)
- February 13 - Tennessee Ernie Ford, American musician (d. 1991)
- February 26 - Rie Mastenbroek, Dutch swimmer (d. 2003)
- March 2 - Jennifer Jones, American actress
- March 15 - Lawrence Tierney, American actor (d. 2002)
- March 17 - Nat King Cole, American singer (d. 1965)
- March 24 - Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American author and publisher
- March 24 - Robert Heilbroner, American economist (d. 2005)
- March 29 - Eileen Heckart, American actress (d. 2001)
- March 30 - McGeorge Bundy, U.S. National Security Advisor (d. 1996)
- April 1 - Joseph Murray, American surgeon, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- April 8 - Ian Douglas Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia
- April 19 - Merce Cunningham, American dancer and choreographer
- April 22 - Donald J. Cram, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2001)

May-August

- May 1 - Dan O'Herlihy, Irish film actor (d. 2005)
- May 3 - John Cullen Murphy, American comic strip artist (d. 2004)
- May 3 - Pete Seeger, American singer and musician
- May 7 - Eva Peron, wife of Argentine President Juan Peron (d. 1952)
- May 8 - Lex Barker, American actor (d. 1973)
- May 16 - Liberace, American pianist (d. 1987)
- May 18 - Dame Margot Fonteyn, English ballet dancer (d. 1991)
- May 20 - George Gobel, American comedian (d. 1991)
- May 23 - Betty Garrett, American actress and dancer
- June 4 - Robert Merrill, American baritone (d. 2004)
- June 5 - Richard Scarry, American children's author (d. 1994)
- June 19 - Pauline Kael, American film critic (d. 2001)
- June 21 - Gérard Pelletier, French journalist, politician, and diplomat (d. 1997)
- June 26 - Richard Neustadt, American political historian (d. 2003)
- July 6 - Ernst Haefliger, Swiss tenor
- July 7 - Jon Pertwee, British actor (d. 1996)
- July 15 - Iris Murdoch, Irish novelist (d. 1999)
- July 20 - Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer
- July 31 - Maurice Boitel, French painter
- August 11 - Ginette Neveu, French violinist (d. 1949)
- August 28 - Godfrey Hounsfield, English electrical engineer and inventor, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 2004)

September-December

- September 11 - Ota Sik, Czech economist and politician (d. 2004)
- September 21 - Fazlur Rahman, Pakistani Islamic scholar (d. 1988)
- September 27 - James H. Wilkinson, English mathematician (d. 1986)
- October 3 - James M. Buchanan, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate
- October 5 - Donald Pleasence, English actor (d. 1995)
- October 11 - Art Blakey, American jazz drummer (d. 1990)
- October 12 - Doris Miller, U.S. Navy cook (d. 1943)
- October 16 - Kathleen Winsor, American writer (d. 2003)
- October 18 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada (d. 2000)
- October 22 - Doris Lessing, British writer
- October 26 - James E. Myers, American songwriter (d. 2001)
- October 26 - Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran (d. 1980)
- November 3 - Jesús Blasco, Spanish comic book author (d. 1995)
- November 5 - Myron Floren, American accordionist (d. 2005)
- November 10 - Mikhail Kalashnikov, Russian firearms inventor
- November 14 - Lisa Otto, German soprano
- November 15 - Roy Burden, Canadian World War II pilot (d. 2005)
- November 18 - Andrée Borrel, French World War II heroine (d. 1944)
- November 28 - Keith Miller, Australian sportsman (d. 2004)
- December 6 - Paul de Man, Belgian-born literary critic (d. 1983)
- December 8 - Moisei Vainberg, Polish composer (d. 1996)
- December 9 - William Lipscomb, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- December 31 - Tommy Byrne, baseball player

Deaths

- January 6 - Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1858)
- January 6 - Max Heindel, Christian occultist, astrologer, and mystic (b. 1865)
- January 15 - Karl Liebknecht, German politician (executed) (b. 1871)
- January 15 - Rosa Luxemburg, German politician (executed)
- January 18 - Prince John of the United Kingdom (b. 1905)
- January 27 - Endre Ady, Hungarian poet (b. 1877)
- February 17 - Wilfrid Laurier, seventh Prime Minister of Canada (b. 1841)
- April 4 - Sir William Crookes, English chemist and physicist (b. 1832)
- April 15 - Jane Delano, American nurse and founder or the American Red Cross Nursing Service (b. 1862)
- May 6 - L. Frank Baum, American writer (b. 1856)
- May 14 - Henry John Heinz, American businessman (b. 1844)
- June 29 - José Gregorio Hernández, Venezuelan medician and saint (b. 1864)
- June 30 - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1842)
- July 15 - Hermann Emil Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)
- July 26 - Sir Edward Poynter, British painter (b. 1936)
- August 9 - Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Italian composer (b. 1857)
- August 11 - Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born businessman and philanthropist (b. 1835)
- October 7 - Alfred Deakin, second Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1856)
- October 13 - Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Danish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1857)
- October 18 - Viscount William Astor, American financier and statesman (b. 1848)
- November 15 - Alfred Werner, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1866)
- December 3 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French painter (b. 1841)

Nobel Prizes

- Physics - Johannes Stark
- Chemistry - not awarded
- Physiology or Medicine - Jules Bordet
- Literature - Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler Category:1919 ko:1919년 ms:1919 ja:1919年 simple:1919 th:พ.ศ. 2462

Author

An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. This can be short or long, fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, technical or literature. In particular, the word is used to refer to a person doing it for pay (as a profession).

Role in critical theory

One key issue in literary theory is the relationship between the meaning of a literary text and its author's conscious intent.
- The phrase "Death of the Author" was popularized by Roland Barthes in his 1968 essay with the same name. It is used to convey the idea that texts have meaning and an independent existence outside that intended by the author, depending on the context and reader.
- The death of the author is in self-conscious opposition to the New Criticism, a literary critical movement popular in England and America in the first half of the 20th century. According to this movement, the author's intent is assumed to be quite clear to the author and it becomes the critic's task to understand this intent.

Novel

A novel (from French nouvelle, "new") is an extended fictional narrative in prose. Down into the 18th century, the word referred specifically to short fictions of love and intrigue as opposed to romances—epic-length works about love and adventures. Having become one of the major literary genres over the past 200 years the novel is today the object of discussions demanding artistic merits, a specific literary style and a deeper meaning than a true story of the same content could claim to have. __TOC__

Novel/Romance: Unstable Words

One meaning of the English word novel has remained stable: novel can still signify what is new due to its "novelty". When it comes to fiction, though, the meaning of the term has changed over time:
- The period 1200-1750 saw a rise of the novel (originally a short piece of fiction) rivalling the romance (the epic-length performance): this development, which one could describe as the first rise of the novel, occurred across Europe, though only the Spanish and the English went one step further and allowed the word novel (or, in Spanish, novela) to become their regular term for fictional narratives.
- The period 1700-1800 saw the rise of a "new romance" in reaction against the potentially scandalous production of novels. The movement encountered a complex situation in the English market, where the term "new romance" could hardly be ventured, after the novel had done so much to transform taste. The new genre adopted the name novel: this new novel was a work of new epic proportions, with the effect that the English (and Spanish) finally needed a new word for the original short "novel": The term novella was finally created to fill the gap in English. "Short story" brought a further refinement. The meaning of the term romance changed within the same complex process, becoming the word for a love story whether in life or fiction. Other meanings include the musicologist's genre "Romance" of a short and amiable piece, or Romance languages for the languages derived from Latin (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and so forth).

History

Traditions of Prose Fiction: The Ancient World

As Pierre Daniel Huet noted in 1670, the tradition of epic works went back as far as Virgil and Homer. The regular format was verse, suiting the purpose of tradition in a culture of oral performances. Today, we see this tradition as going back even further, to the epic of Gilgamesh. It is more difficult to speak of the influence of the shorter performances of regular storytelling on the medieval traditions which led to the development of the novel/novella. There was a third tradition of prose fictions, both in a satirical mode (with Petronius's Satyricon and the incredible stories of Lucian of Samosata), and a heroic strain (with the romances of Heliodorus and Longus). The ancient Greek romance was revived by Byzantine novelists of the 12th century. All of these traditions were then rediscovered in the 17th and 18th centuries, ultimately influencing the modern book market.

The Romance, 1100-1500

The word romance seems to have become the label of romantic fictions because of the "Romance" language in which early (11th and 12th century) works of this genre were composed. The most fashionable genres developed in southern France in the late 12th century and spread east- and northwards with translations and individual national performances. Subject matter such as Arthurian knighthood had already at that time traveled in the opposite direction, reaching southern France from Britain and French Britanny. As a consequence, it is particularly difficult to determine how much the early "romance" owed to ancient Greek models and how much to such northern folkloric verse epics as Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied. The standard plot of the early romance was a series of adventures. Following a plot framework as old as Heliodorus, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies, a hero would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with a second set of adventures leading to a final reunion. Variations kept the genre alive. Unexpected and peculiar adventures surprised the audience with romances like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Classics of the romance developed such as the Roman de la Rose, written first in French, and famous today in English thanks to the translation by Geoffrey Chaucer. These original romances were verse works, adopting a "high language" thought suitable to heroic deeds, and to inspire the emulation of virtues; prose was considered "low", more suitable for satire). Verse allowed the culture of oral traditions to live on, yet it became the language of authors who carefully composed their texts—texts to be spread in writing, thus to preserve the careful artistic composition. The subjects were aristocratic. The textual tradition of ornamented and illustrated handwritten books afforded patronage by the aristocracy or by the monied urban class developing in the 13th and 14th centuries, for whom knight errantry most clearly was a world of fiction and fantasy. The 14th and 15th centuries saw the emergence of first prose romances, a genre rose along with a new book market. This market had developed even before the first printing facilities were introduced: prose authors could speak a new language, a language avoiding the repetition inherent in rhymes. Prose could risk a new rhythm and longer thoughts. Yet it needed the written book to preserve the coincidental formulations the author had chosen. Whilst the printing press was still to come, a commercial book production trade had developed. Legends, lives of saints and mystical visions in prose were the main object of the new market of prose productions. The urban elite, female readers in upper class households and monasteries read religious prose. Prose romances appeared as a new and expensive fashion on this market. They could only truly flourish with the invention of the printing press and with paper becoming a cheaper medium. Both of these achievements arrived in the late 15th century, when the old romance was already facing fierce competition from a number of shorter genres; most salient among these genres was the novel, a form that arose in the course of the 14th century.

The Emergence of the Novel, 1200-1500

Legend It is difficult to give a full catalog of the genres that finally culminated—with the works of Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Niccolò Machiavelli and Miguel de Cervantes—in the "novel" as known today . The early novel was basically any story told for its spectacular or revealing incidents. The original environment—living on with the typical frame settings—was the entertaining conversation. Stories of grave incidents could just as well augment sermons. Collections of examples facilitated the work of preachers in need of such illustrations. A fable could illustrate a moral conclusion; a short historical reflection could do the same. A competition of genres developed. Tastes and social status were—if one believes the medieval collections—decisive. The working classes loved their own brand of drastic stories: stories of clever cheating, wit and ridicule levelled against hated social groups (or competitors among the story tellers). Much of the original genre is still alive with the short joke told in everyday life to make a certain humorous point in a conversation. Artistic performances included the story within a story: situations in which a series of stories was allegedly told. They rejoiced in a broad pattern of tastes and genres. The Canterbury Tales constitute a classic example, with their noble storytellers fond of "romantic" stories and their lower narrators preferring stories of everyday life. The genre did not have its own generic term. "Novel" would simply denote the novelty of the accident narrated. The inclusion of frame stories, however, brought an awareness of the fact that genres were developing in this field. The main advantage of the background story was the justification it put into the hands of the actual authors such as Chaucer and Boccaccio. Romances afforded lofty language and relied on an accepted notion of what deserved to be read as high style. Yet what if the taste in moral teachings and poetry changed? Romances quickly outdated. Stories of cheats and pranks, illicit love affairs, and clever intrigues in which certain respectable professions or the citizens of another town were made fun of were, on the other hand, neither morally nor poetically justifiable. They carried their justification outside. The story teller would offer a few words why he thought this story was worth being told. Again, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales afford the best examples: the real author could tell stories without any other justification than that this story gave a good portrait of the person who told it and of his or her taste—and that justification would remain stable throughout history. If lofty performances grew tedious—as they did in the 14th and 15th centuries with the old plots never leading to newer ones—the collections of tales or novels made it easy to criticise the lofty performances and to reduce their status: one of the group of narrators (created by the actual author) could start with the romantic story only to be interrupted by the other narrators listening within the story. They might silence him or order him to speak a language they liked, or they might ask him to speed up and to make his point. The result was a rise of the short genre. The steps of this development can be noted with the short story gaining appreciation and the value to rival romances in new versified collections at the end of the 14th century.

The First Rise of the Novel, 1500-1750

The Canterbury Tales The invention of printing subjected both novels and romances to a first wave of trivialisation and commercialisation. Printed books were expensive, yet something people would buy, just as people still buy expensive things they can barely afford. Alphabetisation, or the rise of literacy, was a slow process when it came to writing skills, but was faster as far as reading skills were concerned. The Protestant Reformation afforded readers of religious pamphlets, newspapers and broadsheets. The urban population learned to read, but did not aspire to participation in the world of letters. The market of chapbooks developing with the printing press comprised both romances and little histories, tales and fables. Woodcuts were the regular ornament and they were offered without much care. A romance in which the heroic knight had to fight more than ten duels within a few pages could get the same illustration of such a fight again and again if the printers stock of standard illustrations was small. As their stocks grew, printers repeated the same illustrations in other books with similar plots, mixing these illustrations without respect to style. You can open 18th century chapbooks and find illustrations from the early years of printing next to more modern ones. Romances were reduced to cheap and abrupt plots resembling modern comic books. Neither were the first collections of novels necessarily prestigious projects. They appeared with an enormous variety from folk tales over jests to stories told by Boccaccio and Chaucer, now venerable authors. comic book comic book comic book A more prestigious market of romances developed in the 16th century, with multi-volume works aiming at an audience which would subscribe to this production. The criticism levelled against romances by Chaucer's pilgrims grew in response both to the trivialisations and to the extended multi-volume "romances". Romances like the Amadis de Gaula led their readers into dream worlds of knighthood and fed them with ideals of a past no one could revitalise, or so the critics complained. Italian authors like Machiavelli were among those who brought the novel into a new format: while it remained a story of intrigue, ending in a surprising point, the observations were now much finer: how did the protagonists manage their intrigue? How did they keep their secrets, what did they do when others threatened to discover them? The whole question of novels and romances became critical when Cervantes added his Novelas Exemplares (1613) to the two volumes of his Don Quixote (1605/15). The famous satirical romance was levelled against the Amadis which had made Don Quixote lose his mind. Advocates of the lofty romance would, however, claim that the satirical counterpart of the old heroic romance could hardly teach anything: Don Quixote neither offered a hero to be emulated nor did it satisfy with beautiful speeches; all it could do was to make fun of lofty ideals. The Novelas Exemplares offered an alternative between the heroic and the satiric mode, yet critics were even less sure about what to make of this production. Cervantes told stories of adultery, jealousy and crime. If these stories were to give examples, they gave examples of immoral actions. The advocates of the "novel" responded that their stories taught both with good and with bad examples. The reader could still feel compassion and sympathy with the victims of crimes and intrigues, if evil examples were to be told. The alternative to dubious novels and satirical romances were better, lofty romances: a production of romances modeled after Heliodorus arrived as a possible answer with excursions into the bucolic world. Honoré d'Urfés L'Astrée (1607-27) became the most famous work of this type. The criticism that these romances had nothing to do with real life was answered through the device of the roman à clef (literally "novel with a key", one that, properly understood, alludes to characters in the real world). John Barclay's Argenis (1625-26) appeared as a political roman à clef. The romances of Madeleine de Scudéry gained greater influence with plots situated in the ancient world and content taken from life. The famous author told stories of her friends in the literary circles of Paris and developed their fates from volume to volume of her serialised production. Readers of taste bought her books, as they offered the finest observation of human motives, characters taken from life, excellent morals regarding how one should and should not behave if one wanted to succeed in public life and in the intimate circles she portrayed. The novel went its own way: Paul Scarron (himself a hero in the romances of Madeleine de Scudéry) published the first volume of his Roman Comique in 1651 (successive volumes appeared in 1657 and, by another hand, in 1663) with a plea for the development Cervantes had induced in Spain. France should (as he wrote in the famous 21st chapter of his Roman Comique [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/library/e-1700-0002.html#c21]) imitate the Spanish with little stories like those they called "novels". Scarron himself added numerous of such stories to his own work. Twenty years later Madame de La Fayette made the next decisive steps with her two novels. The first, her Zayde published in 1670 together with Pierre Daniel Huet's famous Treatise on the Origin of Romances, was a "Spanish History". Her second and more important novel appeared in 1678: La Princesse de Clèves proved that France could actually produce novels of a particularly French taste. The Spanish enjoyed stories of proud Spaniards who fought duels to avenge their reputations. The French had a more refined taste with minute observation of human motives and behaviour. The story was firmly a "novel" and not a "romance": a story of unparalleled female virtue, with a heroine who had had the chance to risk an illicit amour and not only withstood the temptation but made herself more unhappy by confessing her feelings to her husband. The gloom her story created was entirely new and sensational. The regular novel took another turn. The late 17th century saw the emergence of a European market for scandal, with French books appearing now mostly in the Netherlands (where censorship was liberal) to be re-imported clandestinely back into France. The same production reached the neighbouring markets of Germany and Britain, where it was welcomed both for its French style and its predominantly anti-French politics. The novel flourished on this market as the best genre to purport scandalous news. The authors claimed the stories they had to tell were true, told not for the sake of scandal but only for the moral lessons they gave. To prove this, they fictionalized the names of their characters and told these stories as if they were novels. (The audience played its own game in identifying who was who). Journals of little stories appeared—the Mercure Gallant became the most important. Collections of letters added to the market; these included more of these little stories and led to the development of the epistolary novel in the late 17th century. In the late 1670s the novel reached the English market. Aphra Behn and William Congreve were among the first modern English authors to adopt the term.

State of Affairs: The Market around 1700

Early 18th century novels and romances were still not considered part the world of learning, hence, not of part of literature; they were market goods. If you opened the term catalogues it was mostly situated in the—predominantly political—field of "History and Politicks" with some romances like Cervantes Don Quixote translated into verse becoming poetical. The integration of prose fiction into the market of histories appeared under the following scheme:

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		3.1 Heroical Romances: Fénelon's Telemach (1699)
1 Sold as romantic inventions, read as true histories of public affairs: Manley's New Atalantis (1709)	2 Sold as romantic inventions, read as true histories of private affairs: Menantes' Satyrischer Roman (1706)	3.2 Classics of the novel from the Arabian Nights to M. de La Fayette's Princesse de Cleves (1678)	4 Sold as true private history, risking to be read as romantic invention: Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719)	5 Sold as true public history, risking to be read as romantic invention: La Guerre d'Espagne (1707)
		3.3 Satirical Romances: Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605)	From Olaf Simons, Marteaus Europa (Amsterdam, 2001), p.194.

The centre of the market was held by fictions which claimed to be fictions and which were read as such. They comprised a high production of romances and, at the bottom end, an opposing production of satirical romances. In the centre, the novel had grown, with stories that were neither heroic nor predominantly satirical, yet mostly realistic, short and stimulating with their examples of human actions to be discussed. The central production had two wings: On the left hand, one had books which claimed to be romances, but which threatened to be anything but fictitious. Delarivier Manley wrote the most famous of them, her New Atalantis, full of stories the author claimed to have invented. The censors were helpless: Manley had hawked stories discrediting the ruling Whigs, yet should they ask the Whigs to prove that all these stories actually happened on British soil rather than on the fairy tale island Atalantis? This was what they had to do if they wanted to sue the author. Delarivier Manley escaped the interrogations unscathed and continued her libellous work with three more volumes of the same ilk. Private stories appeared on the same market, creating a different genre of personal love and public battles over lost reputations. On the other hand one had a market of titles which claimed to be strictly non-fictional—Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe became the most important of them. The genre-identification: "Sold as true private history, risking to be read as romantic invention" opened the preface:

IF ever the Story of any Man's Adventures in the World were worth making Publick, 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 apply them (viz.) to the Instruction of others by this Example, and to justify and honor the Wisdom of Providence in all the Variety of 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.

A production of histories of similar verisimilitude dove into the overtly political. Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (1644-1712) became the most important author in this field with his first version of d'Artagnan's story, told again more than a century later by Alexandre Dumas the elder. Witty, and a distant precursor of Ian Fleming's fictional James Bond, is another book allegedly by his hand: La Guerre d'Espagne (1707) the story of a disillusioned French spy, who gave insight into French politics—and into his own love affairs, with little intrigues he managed wherever he had to do his jobs. Fact and fiction were mixed in all these titles, to the point that one could no longer tell where the author had invented and where he had simply betrayed secrets.

The Second Rise of the Novel or the New Romance, 1700-1800

The early 18th century had—with the novel diving into private and public scandal—reached a state of affairs where a new reform seemed desirable. The old Amadis could be said to have driven its readers into dream worlds, and the new novels, devoid of lofty speeches and incredible acts of heroism, had done much to refine taste. Yet they had created entirely new risks, with stories of love in which children cheated their parents, and with which private and public gossip were published on the open market. Jane Barker was among the 18th century voices who demanded a return to the old antiquated romance. Her "New Romance" Exilius (1715) opened with the sketch of a new tradition: the romance had, so Jane Barker claimed, developed from Geoffrey Chaucer to François Fénelon; the latter was the author who had just become famous with his epochal romance Telemachus (1699/1700). Fénelon's English publishers had carefully avoided the term "romance" and rather published a "new epic in prose"—so the prefaces. Jane Barker insisted, however, on publishing her Exilius as "New Romance [...] after the manner of Telemachus", and failed on the market. In 1719 her publisher, Edmund Curll, finally removed the old title pages and offered her works as a collection of novels. The big market success of the next decade—Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe—appeared that very year and W. Taylor, the publisher, avoided all these traps with a title page claiming neither the realm of novels nor that of romances, but that of histories, yet with a page design tasting all too much of the "new romance" with which Fénelon had just become famous. histories Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was everything but a novel, as the term was understood at the time. It was neither short, nor did it focus on an intrigue, nor was it told for the sake of a clear cut point. Nor was Crusoe an anti-hero of a satirical romance, though he spoke the first person singular and had stumbled into all kinds of miseries. He did not really invite laughter (though readers of taste would read, of course, all his proclamations about being a real man as made in good humour). The feigned author was serious: Against his will his life had brought him into this series of most romantic adventures. He had fallen into the hands of pirates and survived years on an uninhabited island. He had survived all this—a mere sailor from York—with exemplary heroism. If readers read his work as a romance, full of sheer invention, he could not blame them. He and his publisher knew that all he had to tell was strictly unbelievable, and yet they would claim it was true (and if not, still readable as good allegory)—the complex game which puts this work into the fourth column of the pattern above.

The Market of Classics and the Reform of the Novel, 1700-1800

allegory The publication of Robinson Crusoe did not lead into the mid-18th century market reform. Crusoe's books were published as a dubious histories; they played the game of the scandalous early 18th century market, with the novel fully integrated into the realm of histories. They even appeared reprinted by one of the London newspapers as a possibly true relation of facts. Philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau turned Robinson Crusoe into a classic decades later, and it took another century before one could see Defoe's book as the first English "novel"—published, as Ian Watt saw it in 1957, as an answer to the market of French romances. The reform of the early 18th century market of novels came with the production of classics: 1720 saw the decisive edition of classics of the European novel published in London with titles from Machiavelli to Marie de LaFayette. Aphra Behn's novels had over the last decades appeared in collections of her works. The author of the 1680s had become a classic by now. Fénelon had become a classic years ago, as had Heliodorus. The works of Petronius and Longos appeared, equipped with prefaces which put them into the tradition of prose fiction Huet had defined. Prose fiction itself had, according to the critics, a history of ups and downs: having run into a crisis with the Amadis, it found its remedy with the novel. It now needed continuous care. Yet, all in all, it could claim to be the most elegant part of the belles lettres, the new market segment within the bigger market of literature, embracing the new classics. Huet's Traitté de l'origine des romans first published in 1670 and now circulating in a number of translations and editions won a central position among those writings which had dealt with prose fiction. The Treatise had created the first corpus of texts to be discussed and it had been the first title that demonstrated how one could "interpret" worldly fictions—just as a theologian would interpret parts of the gospel in a theological debate. The interpretation needed its aims, of course—and Huet had offered a number of questions one could ask: What did the fictional work of a foreign culture or distant period tell us about those who constructed the fiction? What were the cultural needs such stories answered? Are there fundamental anthropological premises which make us create fictional worlds? Did these fictions entertain, divert and instruct? Did they—as one could assume when reading ancient and medieval myths—just provide a substitute for better, more scientific knowledge or did they add to the luxuries of life a particular culture enjoyed? The ancient Mediterranean erotic stories could afford such an interpretation. The interpretation and analysis of classics placed readers of fictions in an entirely new and improved position: it made a vast difference whether you read a romance and got lost in a dream world or whether you read the same romance with a preface telling you more about the Greeks, Romans or Arabs who produced titles like the Aethopica or The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (first published in Europe from 1704 to 1717 in French and translated immediately from this edition into English and German).

To be Discussed: The Novel turning into Literature, 1740-1800

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights The early 18th century market for classics of prose fiction inspired living authors. Aphra Behn turned from an anonymous hack into a celebrated author after her death. Fénelon achieved the same fame during his life time. Delarivier Manley, Jane Barker and Eliza Haywood followed their famous French models who had dared to claim fame with their real names: the Madame d'Aulnoy and Anne Marguerite Petit DuNoyer. Most previous novels had been pseudonymous; now they became the productions of famous authors. The discourse necessary to appreciate such a move towards responsibility was yet underdeveloped. Journals discussing literature focussed on "learning", literature in the strict sense of the word. So far, most discussion of novels and romances had taken place within the field itself. Literary criticism, a critical—external—discourse about poetry and fiction arose in the second half of the 18th century. It opened an interaction between separate participants in which novelists would write in order to be criticised and in which the public would observe the interaction between critics and authors. The new criticism of the late 18th century offered a reform by establishing a market of works worthy to be discussed (whilst the rest of the market would thus continue but lose most of its public appeal). The result was a market division into a low field of popular fictions and a critical literary production. The latter privileged works which rivalled ancient verse epics to be discussed as art, which played with the traditions of prose fiction (they opened an internal discourse about the history of literature), and which were of a clearly defined fictional status—they alone could be discussed as works created by an artist who wanted this and no other story to be discussed by the audience. The old design of title pages changed: New novels no longer pretended to sell fictions whilst threatening to betray real secrets. Nor did they appear as false "true histories". The new title pages pronounced their works to be fictions, and indicated how the public might discuss them. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740) was one of the titles which brought the old novel-title with its "[...] or [...]" formula offering an example into the new format: "Pamela or Virtue Rewarded – Now first published in order to cultivate the Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes, A Narrative which has the Foundation in Truth and Nature; and at the same time that it agreeably entertains…" So the title page read, and made it clear that the work was crafted by an artist aiming at a certain effect—yet to be discussed by the critical audience. A decade later novels, needed no other status than that of being novels, fiction. Present-day editions of novels simply state "Fiction" on the cover. It had become prestigious to be sold under the label, asking for discussion and thought. Scandal as the DuNoyer or Delarivier Manley had published it vanished from the market of prose fiction—whether high or low. It could not attract serious critics and it was lost if it remained undiscussed. It ultimately needed its own brand of scandalous journalism—the journalism which developed with the yellow press. The low market of prose fiction went on to focus on immediate satisfaction of an audience enjoying its stay in the fictional world. The high market grew complex, with works playing new games. On the high market, one could eventually see two traditions developing: one of works playing with the art of fiction—Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is among them—the other closer to the prevailing discussions and moods of its audience. The great conflict of the 19th century was yet to come, as to whether artists should write to satisfy the public or whether to produce art for art's sake.

Sentimentalism, Psychology, and a New Individual, 1750-1850

The mid- and late 18th century novel of sentimentalism produced an entirely new individual, one with a different attitude towards privacy and the public. Had the early 18th century heroine been bold and ready to protect her reputation if necessary in a press war her mid-18th century descendant was far too modest and shy to do the same. Early 18th century heroines had their secrets, they loved effective intrigues, they tried whatever they felt necessary to get what they wanted. Mid-18th century heroines developed a feeling of modesty. They suffered if they had to keep secrets and felt an urge to confess. They searched for friends and intimacy, for situations in which they could freely open their hearts and speak of their deepest wishes. The 18th century audience saw these new heroes and heroines with amazement. When it came to their most secret wishes they dared to confide in their parents and friends—a trust which would have made them easy victims in the early 18th century world of fiction, libel, intrigue and scandal. Now, however, these weak heroines met an environment of compassion. Instead of making their affairs a public entertainment, the new heroes and heroines developed an intimacy into which the novel alone could take a careful look. Special genres flourished with these protagonists who would not wash their dirty linen in the public: Their letters or diaries were found and published only after their death. A wave of sentimentalism was the first result, leading to heroes like Henry Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771). A second wave followed with more radical heroes who could no longer dream of an environment understanding them. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774) was at the forefront of the new movement, and yielded a wave of compassion and understanding with readers ready to follow Werther into his suicide. Critics embraced the new heroes as the best sign of a new literature which aimed at discussions. The understanding these heroes craved for afforded a secondary discussion—a discussion of the nature of the human psyche so much better observed by these new novels. The novel had, with these developments, turned advocacy of individual and societal moral reform into a genre. With the romantic movement beginning in the 1770s, the development went one step further: the novel became the medium of an avant garde, the genre where emotions found their test cases. The Bildungsroman developed in Germany—a novel focussing on the development of the individual, his or her education and its way into individuality and society. New sciences—from sociology to psychology—developed with the new individual and influenced the discussions surrounding the novel in the 19th century.

The 19th century and the Novel as the object of great Discussions

At the beginning of the 17th century the novel had been a genre of realism fighting the romance with its wild fantasies. The novel had turned to scandal, then it had been reformed over the last decades of the 18th century. Fiction eventually became the most honourable field of literature. A wave of novels of fantasy culminated this development at the turn of the 18th into the 19th century. Sensibility was heightened in these novels. Women, overwrought and prone to imagining worlds beyond their appointed one, became the heroines of the new world of "romances" and "Gothic novels" creating stories in distant times and places. Renaissance Italy was a favourite of the gothic novel. The classic Gothic novel is Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). As in other Gothic novels, the notion of the sublime is central. Eighteenth-century aesthetic theory held that the sublime and the beautiful were juxtaposed. The sublime was awful (awe-inspiring) and terrifying while the beautiful was calm and reassuring. The characters and landscapes of the Gothic rest almost entirely within the sublime, with the heroine the great exception. The "beautiful" heroine's susceptibility to supernatural elements, integral to these novels, both celebrates and problematizes what came to be seen as hyper-sensibility. At the beginning of the 19th century, the overwrought emotions of sensibility, as expressed through the Gothic sublime, had run their course. Jane Austen wrote a Gothic novel parody titled Northanger Abbey (1803), reflecting the death of the Gothic novel. Moreover, while sensibility did not disappear, it was less valued. Austen introduced a different style of writing—the comedy of manners. Her novels often are not only funny, but also scathingly critical of the restrictive, rural culture of the early 19th century. Her best known novel, Pride and Prejudice (1811), is her happiest, and has been a blueprint for much subsequent romantic fiction; her novels are still retain a wide following, despite the distance between their heroines' dilemmas and those of a 21st-century reader. The market for novels in the 19th century separated into a new "high" and "low" production. The new high production can best be viewed in terms of national traditions. The low production is rather organised by genres in a pattern deriving from the spectrum of 17th- and 18th-century genres: 1. Literature (with a capital L) promoted by critical discourse.

Spanish Literature

French Literature

German Literature

English Literature

…by language and nation

2. Popular Fiction not promoted by criticism

1
The modern roman à clef (a recent example is Primary Colors)

2
Sex, including soft "romantic" pornography for the female audience

3
Historical settings (the tradition of heroic romances), crime (the tradition of the 17th century novel)

4
Adventure, Science fiction

5
Espionage, Conspiracy

The position of authors attained its modern form with the establishment of this pattern. The modern author can aim at broad market or write with an eye to serious critical discussion. The borders between the realms have developed differently in different nations. While this modern market divide came relatively late to the English-speaking world, Germany and France had an earlier and much stronger interest in creating national literatures—France in the wake of the French Revolution, Germany during its mid-19th-century unification. Both of these nations experienced a division between high literature—discussed in schools and newspapers, and celebrated in public life—and a low production—not worthy to be mentioned in such circles— while the vast commercial market of the English-speaking world still resisted this artificial divide. Here and there new author identities developed as the novel proved to be a perfect medium for a communication both intimate (novels are read by privately whereas plays are always a public event) and public (novels are published and thus become a matter touching the public if not the nation and its vital interests), a medium of a personal point of view which can get the world into its view. New modes of interaction between authors and the public reflected these developments: authors reading in the public, authors receiving prestigious prizes, authors giving interviews in the media and acting as their nations' conscience. This concept of the novelist as public figure arose in the course of the 19th century.

The 20th Century: From Modernism to Postmodernism

Modernist literature and Postmodern literature

Individual Novels Discussed

From Western antiquity—Greece and Rome—these are the earliest, extant novels:
- Xenophon, The Education of Cyrus (Greek, 4th century BC). A largely fictional account of the education of King Cyrus the Great of Persia. This is considered a precursor to the novel.
- Petronius, Satyricon (Latin, 1st century).
- Apuleius, The Golden Ass (Latin, 2nd century).
- Chariton, The Loves of Chaereas and Callirhoe (Greek, 1st century–2nd century).
- Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon (Greek, 2nd century).
- Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (Greek, 2nd century).
- Xenophon of Ephesus, Ephesian Tale (Greek, 2nd century–3rd century).
- Heliodorus, Ethiopian Tale (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
- Anon, Acts of Xanthippe, Polyxena, and Rebecca (Greek, 3rd century–4th century).
- Anon, Joseph and Aseneth (Greek, 1st century–5th century).
- Anon, The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre (Latin adaptation of lost Greek original, 5th century–6th century).

Asian works

Early important Asian novels include:
- Dandin, The Adventures of the Ten Princes (Sanskrit, 6th century–7th century).
- Banabhatta, Kadambari (Sanskrit, 7th century).
- Anon, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Japanese, 10th century).
- Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji (Japanese, 11th century). Arguably the first novel, in the sense of a continued fictional narrative written by one author.
- Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Chinese, 14th century).
- Shi Nai'an and Luo Guanzhong, Water Margin (Chinese, 15th century).
- Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West (Chinese, 16th century).
- Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber (Chinese, 18th Century).

The 13th century

- Ramon Llull, Blanquerna (1283)

The 14th century

- Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (1353)
- Geoffre