000			03248cam a22003133u 4500
001			78426
003			UtSlPG
005			20260610134822.0
006			m
007			cr n
008			260607r20261930utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d
040			_aUtSlPG
041		7	_aen _2iso639-1
050		4	_aPR
100	1		_aFord, Ford Madox, _d1873-1939
245	1	4	_aThe English novel
264		1	_aSalt Lake City, UT : _bProject Gutenberg, _c2026
300			_a1 online resource : _bmultiple file formats
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_acomputer _bc _2rdamedia
338			_aonline resource _bcr _2rdacarrier
500			_aRelease date is 2026-04-12
508			_aSean (@parchmentglow)
520			_a"The English novel" by Ford Madox Ford is a critical study written in the early 20th century. It surveys the development and technique of the novel (largely through English examples but with an international lens) and argues for its central social function in modern life, culminating in Joseph Conrad. The work blends history, craft talk, and polemic for general readers, challenging academic orthodoxies while reassessing figures from Bunyan, Defoe, and Richardson to Flaubert and Conrad. The opening of this study begins with an “Author’s Apology” to Hugh Walpole, explaining the book’s origins as lectures for American students, Ford’s modest readership in England, and his decision to publish at home out of gratitude and to aid students; he promises a frank, controversial, craftsman’s map rather than academic doctrine. He then argues that the novel has become indispensable in a mobile, urban world where gossip and shared lives have thinned: unlike tabloids, art leaves lasting impressions and supplies the “cloud of human instances” once provided by classical culture, thereby aerating public life. He outlines a plan to trace a transnational lineage from antiquity to Conrad and signals that his estimates will provoke disagreement. Early chapters sketch the ground: medieval story collections and drama fed the appetite for fiction; the Elizabethan stage is treated as “novels for recitation,” with thoughts on Shakespeare’s page-versus-stage effects; printing and Chaucer prepared readers for sustained prose. He contrasts Spanish picaresque with English taste, then shows Bunyan’s sincere, vividly rendered allegory and Defoe’s journalistic, autobiographical convention as foundational steps toward convincing narrative. Moving “towards Flaubert,” he links modern technique to the plain, image-rich prose of the Prayer Book and Bible, praises Richardson’s epistolary sentiment as a breakthrough, and criticizes Fielding and Thackeray as moralizing purveyors of the “nuvvle.” Throughout, he frames the central technical problem as finding a watertight convention that makes readers feel truly present in a scene, noting how Bunyan, Defoe, and Richardson each attempted it. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534			_pOriginally published: _cLondon: Constable & Company Limited, 1930
653			_aEnglish fiction -- History and criticism
856	4		_uhttps://archive.org/details/englishnovelfrom0000ford/page/n5/mode/2up
856	4	0	_uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78426
999			_c119146 _d119146