Nation and Novel: The English Novel from its Origins to the Present Day - Hardcover

this is a refreshingly ambitious book...[Parrinder] has a gift for succinct synopsis and the ability to evoke not just the matter of a novel but also its artistic effect. (David Gervais, The Cambridge Quarterly)

Parrinder's book...marches to the drum of a strong thesis. (Star Weekend)

The book is crammed with perceptive passages. (Terry Eagleton, The Guardian)

A confident and absorbing book (John Mullan, Times literary Supplement)

A formidable project... It represents an extraordinary immersion in the English novel... Confident and absorbing. (John Mullan, Times Literary Supplement)

Thoroughly researched literary history. (Dipli Saikia, THES)

What is 'English' about the English novel, and how has the idea of the English nation been shaped by the writers of fiction? How do the novel's profound differences from poetry and drama affect its representation of national consciousness?

Nation and Novel sets out to answer these questions by tracing English prose fiction from its late medieval origins through its stories of rogues and criminals, family rebellions and suffering heroines, to the present-day novels of immigration. Major novelists from Daniel Defoe to the late twentieth century have drawn on national history and mythology in novels which have pitted Cavalier against Puritan, Tory against Whig, region against nation, and domesticity against empire. The novel is deeply concerned with the fate of the nation, but almost always at variance with official and ruling-class perspectives on English society.

Patrick Parrinder's groundbreaking new literary history outlines the English novel's distinctive, sometimes paradoxical, and often subversive view of national character and identity. This sophisticated yet accessible assessment of the relationship between fiction and nation will set the agenda for future research and debate.