SOURCE: "Richardson and Fielding," in The English Novel, John Murray, 1894, pp. 140-79.

In the following chapter from his The English Novel, Raleigh discusses both the roots of prose fiction in drama and its maturation in the works of Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. Much of the credit that he gives these authors depends on the presence of realism in their fiction, especially "direct" narrative from a character's point of view, attention to detail in description, and a focus on the processes of individual consciousness.

In one or other of the various literary forms dealt with in the last chapter, almost all the characteristic features of the modern novel are to be found. Yet the novel was slow to arise. For many years after the appearance of the masterly sketches and tales of the Tatler and Spectator, writers were content to imitate these more or less exactly in the...