SOURCE: “Epistolary Fiction (Particularly the Novel) in France and in Italy,” in The Epistolary Novel: Its Origin, Development, Decline, and Residuary Influence, Russell & Russell, 1963, pp. 181-94.

In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1933, Singer examines the popularity of the epistolary genre in France, Italy, and Germany, countries whose works he says most critics neglect because of the prominence of Samuel Richardson and other English authors.

The casting of narrative works of fiction, which we have designated novels, into epistolary form, was a practice by no means limited to the land which gave the greatest examples of the art any more than it was to the century which produced its most distinguished proponents and in which the mode reached its highest peak of development and achievement. Novels were written in this form by French, Italian, American, German, Russian, and other authors. In Brian W. Downs' book...