| | PAGE |
| Preface | [vii] |
| PART I |
| Origins | [5] |
| 'The Romance of the Rose' | [19] |
| Chaucer and Boccaccio | [31] |
| The Rogue Novel | [51] |
| The Elizabethans | [67] |
| The Pastoral | [81] |
| Cervantes | [93] |
| The Essayists' Contribution to Story-telling | [107] |
| Transition: Bunyan and Defoe | [125] |
| Richardson and the Feminine Novel | [139] |
| Fielding, Smollett, and the Masculine Novel | [155] |
| A Note on Sterne | [169] |
| PART II |
| Chateaubriand and Romanticism | [175] |
| Scott and Romanticism | [187] |
| The Romanticism of 1830 | [201] |
| Balzac | [217] |
| Gautier and the East | [231] |
| Poe and the New Technique | [243] |
| Hawthorne and Moral Romance | [257] |
| Mérimée and Conversational Story-telling | [273] |
| Flaubert | [287] |
| A Note on De Maupassant | [298] |
| Conclusion | [305] |
| Index | [313] |