Follow Business Insider: You've seen Google's annual lists of trendy search terms, featuring things like  robin williams, world cup, and ebola , but those show only the most unusually popular terms, not the most popular terms overall.
Murasaki Shikibu is the best known writer to emerge from Japan's glorious Heian period. Her novel, The Tale of Genji (Genji-monogatari) is considered to be one of the world's finest and earliest novels. Some argue that Murasaki is the world's first modern novelist.
The following works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English. 1  Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, (written c. 1470, published 1485) 2  William Baldwin, Beware the Cat, (written 1553, published 1570, 1584) 3  John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and his England (1580)