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                               THE NOVEL

            [Illustration: image of colophon not available]

       [Illustration: image of F. Marion Crawford not available]




                               THE NOVEL

                              WHAT IT IS

                                  BY

                          F. MARION CRAWFORD

           Author of “Mr. Isaacs,” “Dr. Claudius,” “A Roman
                             Singer,” etc.

                               New York

                         MACMILLAN AND COMPANY
                              AND LONDON

                                 1893

                         _All rights reserved_

                           COPYRIGHT, 1893,
                         BY MACMILLAN AND CO.

                            Norwood Press:
                 J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith.
                         Boston, Mass., U.S.A.




WHAT IS A NOVEL?


My answer can only be a statement of opinion, which I make with much
deference to the prejudices of my brethren. Whether it will be of
interest to general readers I do not know; but the question I propose is
in itself more or less vital as regards novel-writing. No one will deny
that truism. Before going to work it is important to know what one means
to do. I pretend, however, to no special gift for solving problems in
general or this one in particular. To give “the result of one’s
experience,” as the common phrase puts it, is by no means so easy as it
sounds. An intelligent man mostly knows what he means by his own words,
but it does not follow that he can convey that meaning to others. Almost
all discussion and much misunderstanding may fairly be said to be based
upon the difference between the definitions of common terms as
understood by the two parties. In the exact sciences there is no such
thing as discussion; there is the theorem and its demonstration, there
is the problem and its solution, from which solution and demonstration
there is no appeal. That is because, in mathematics, every word is
defined before it is used and is almost meaningless until it has been
defined.

It has been remarked by a very great authority concerning the affairs of
men that “of making many books there is no end,” and to judge from
appearances the statement is even more true to-day than when it was
first made. Especially of making novels there is no end, in these times
of latter-day literature. No doubt many wise and good persons and many
excellent critics devoutly wish that there might be; but they are not at
present strong enough to stand against us, the army of fiction-makers,
because we are many, and most of us do not know how to do anything else,
and have grown grey in doing this particular kind of work, and are
dependent upon it for bread as well as butter; and lastly and chiefly,
because we are heavily backed, as a body, by the capital of the
publisher, of which we desire to obtain for ourselves as much as
possible. Therefore novels will continue to be written, perhaps for a
long time to come. There is a demand for them and there is profit in
producing them. Who shall prevent us, authors and publishers, from
continuing the production and supplying the demand?

This brings with it a first answer to the question, “What is a novel?” A
novel is a marketable commodity, of the class collectively termed
“luxuries,” as not contributing directly to the support of life or the
maintenance of health. It is of the class “artistic luxuries” because it
does not appeal to any of the three material senses--touch, taste,
smell; and it is of the class “intellectual artistic luxuries,” because
it is not judged by the superior senses--sight and hearing. The novel,
therefore, is an intellectual artistic luxury--a definition which can be
made to include a good deal, but which is, in reality, a closer one than
it appears to be at first sight. No one, I think, will deny that it
covers the three principal essentials of the novel as it should be, of a
story or romance, which in itself and in the manner of telling it shall
appeal to the intellect, shall satisfy the requirements of art, and
shall be a luxury, in that it can be of no use to a man when he is at
work, but may conduce to peace of mind and delectation during his hours
of idleness. The point upon which people differ is the artistic one, and
the fact that such differences of opinion exist makes it possible that
two writers as widely separated as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Rider
Haggard, for instance, find appreciative readers in the same year of the
same century--a fact which the literary history of the future will find
it hard to explain.


Probably no one denies that the first object of the novel is to amuse
and interest the reader. But it is often said that the novel should
instruct as well as afford amusement, and the “novel-with-a-purpose” is
the realisation of this idea. We might invent a better expression than
that clumsy translation of the neat German “_Tendenz-Roman_.” Why not
compound the words and call the odious thing a “purpose-novel”? The
purpose-novel, then, proposes to serve two masters, besides procuring a
reasonable amount of bread and butter for its writer and publisher. It
proposes to escape from my definition of the novel in general and make
itself an “intellectual moral lesson” instead of an “intellectual
artistic luxury.” It constitutes a violation of the unwritten contract
tacitly existing between writer and reader. So far as supply and demand
are concerned, books in general and works of fiction in particular are
commodities and subject to the same laws, statutory and traditional, as
other articles of manufacture. A toy-dealer would not venture to sell
real pistols to little boys as pop-guns, and a gun-maker who should try
to sell the latter for army revolvers would get into trouble, even
though he were able to prove that the toy was as expensive to
manufacture as the real article, or more so, silver-mounted, chiselled,
and lying in a Russia-leather case. I am not sure that the law might not
support the purchaser in an action for damages if he discovered at a
critical moment that his revolver was a plaything. It seems to me that