Sutherland, John

No previous author has attempted a book such as this: a complete history of novels written in the English language, from the genre's seventeenth-century origins to the present day. In the spirit of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, acclaimed critic and scholar John Sutherland selects 294 writers whose works illustrate the best of every kind of fiction--from gothic, penny dreadful, and pornography to fantasy, romance, and high literature. Each author was chosen, Professor Sutherland explains, because his or her books are well worth reading and are likely to remain so for at least another century. Sutherland presents these authors in chronological order, in each case deftly combining a lively and informative biographical sketch with an opinionated assessment of the writer's work. Taken together, these novelists provide both a history of the novel and a guide to its rich variety. Always entertaining, and sometimes shocking, Sutherland considers writers as diverse as Daniel Defoe, Henry James, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Michael Crichton, Jeffrey Archer, and Jacqueline Susann.

a history of fiction in 294 lives

Lives of the novelists

Curiosities of literature

John Crace

An A-Z of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte

Brontesaurus

M. P. Shiel

Purple Cloud

Good Brexiteers Guide to English Lit

Puzzles and Conundrums in Mary Shelley's Monstrous Masterpiece

Frankenstein's Brain

life-changing encounters with books, films, music

Magic moments

Popular Fiction of The 1970s

Bestsellers Vol. 6

The Longman companion to Victorian fiction

a memoir

The boy who loved books

an A-Z of England's greatest novelist

The Dickens dictionary

The Unauthorised Biography of a Victorian Sensation

Jumbo

a pathological biography

Orwell's nose

Robert Louis Stevenson

Black Arrow

Siege

Sutherland, John

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