Includes bibliographical references and index.

Fiction in Shakespeare's time -- The seventeenth century -- Defoe and his contemporaries -- Psychological realism begins: Samuel Richardson -- Fielding and the prose epic -- Smollett and the novel of humors -- The triumph of sensibility: Laurence Sterne -- Sentimentalists and revolutionaries -- The renascence of wonder -- The romance of the tea-table -- The heights -- From Scott to Dickens -- White magic -- The disciples of Dickens -- Counter-blast: W.M. Thackeray -- The novelist as novelist: Anthony Trollope -- Fire over Yorkshire -- The "new" novel: George Eliot -- The poetic comedy of George Meredith -- Hardy and the cosmic drama -- Romance resurgent: Robert Louis Stevenson -- Victorian Sunset -- Towards a new century -- Values and Joseph Conrad -- Novelist of being: Arnold Bennett -- H.G. Wells, "realist of the fantastic" -- Pity, irony, and John Galsworthy -- D.H. Lawrence, pilgrim of the rainbow -- "Stream-of-consciousness" -- News of Tishnar: Walter de la Mare -- Appendix: some nineteenth century novelists not considered in the text -- Selected bibliography with annotations -- Supplementary bibliography.