[85] The Later Renaissance, 113.
[86] Evolution of the English Novel, 120.
- 1816 Headlong Hall
- 1817 Melincourt (also Northanger Abbey)
- 1818 Nightmare Abbey
- 1822 Maid Marian
- 1828 The Voyage of Captain Popanilla
- 1829 The Misfortunes of Elphin
- 1831 Crochet Castle
- 1833 Ixion, and The Infernal Marriage
- 1839 Catherine
- 1841 The Yellowplush Papers
- 1845 The Legend of the Rhine
- 1847 Novels by Eminent Hands
- 1849 The Great Hoggarty Diamond
- 1850 Rebecca and Rowena
- 1855 The Rose and the Ring
- 1856 The Shaving of Shagpat
- 1857 Farina
- 1861 Gryll Grange
- 1871 The Coming Race
- 1872 Erewhon
- 1901 Erewhon Revisited
[88] Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon, 65.
[89] Draper: Social Satire of Thomas Love Peacock. Modern Language Notes, XXXIV, i
[90] With the exception of The Way of All Flesh; another instance of Butler’s wider range.
[91] The word novel must of course be stretched if it is to include this set of fantastic fiction. But that is easily done by accepting Chesterton’s dictum: “Now in the sense in which there is such a thing as an epic, in that sense there is no such thing as a novel.” Charles Dickens, 114.
The other alternative is the one taken by Mrs. Oliphant: “We use the word adventurer advisedly, for we cannot regard Peacock’s entry into the field of fiction as by any means an authorized one. One cannot help feeling that he did not want to write novels, but that he found that he could not get at the public in any other way; * * * The consequence is that his novels are not novels in the proper sense of the word.” Victorian Age of English Literature, 16.
Cf. Shaw, of whose dramas a similar statement might be made.