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Anovelist is anauthor orwriter ofnovels, though often novelists also write in othergenres of bothfiction andnon-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make aliving writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to support themselves in this way or write as anavocation. Most novelists struggle to have theirdebut novel published, but once published they often continue to be published, although very few become literary celebrities, thus gaining prestige or a considerable income from their work.
Novelists come from a variety of backgrounds and social classes, and frequently this shapes the content of their works.Public reception of a novelist's work, theliterary criticism commenting on it, and the novelists' incorporation of their own experiences into works and characters can lead to the author's personal life and identity being associated with a novel's fictional content. For this reason, the environment within which a novelist works and the reception of their novels by both the public and publishers can be influenced by their demographics or identity. Similarly, some novelists have creative identities derived from their focus on differentgenres of fiction, such ascrime,romance orhistorical novels.
While many novelists compose fiction to satisfy personal desires, novelists and commentators often ascribe a particular social responsibility or role to novel writers. Many authors use such moral imperatives to justify different approaches to novel writing, including activism or different approaches to representing reality "truthfully."
Novelist is a term derivative from the term "novel" describing the "writer of novels." TheOxford English Dictionary recognizes other definitions of novelist, first appearing in the 16th and 17th centuries to refer to either "An innovator (in thought or belief); someone who introduces something new or who favours novelty" or "An inexperienced person; a novice."[1] However, theOED attributes the primary contemporary meaning of "a writer of novels" as first appearing in the 1633 book "East-India Colation" by C. Farewell citing the passage "It beeing a pleasant observation (at a distance) to note the order of their Coaches and Carriages..As if (presented to a Novelist) it had bin the spoyles of a Tryumph leading Captive, or a preparation to some sad Execution"[1] According to theGoogle Ngrams, the term novelist first appears in the Google Books database in 1521.[2]
The difference between professional and amateur novelists often is the author's ability to publish. Many people take up novel writing as a hobby, but the difficulties of completing large scale fictional works of quality prevent the completion of novels. Once authors have completed a novel, they often will try to publish it. The publishing industry requires novels to have accessible profitable markets, thus many novelists willself-publish to circumvent the editorial control of publishers.Self-publishing has long been an option for writers, withvanity presses printing bound books for a fee paid by the writer. In these settings, unlike the more traditional publishing industry, activities usually reserved for a publishing house, like the distribution and promotion of the book, become the author's responsibility. The rise of the Internet andelectronic books has made self publishing far less expensive and a realistic way for authors to realize income.
Novelists apply a number of different methods to writing their novels, relying on a variety of approaches to inspire creativity.[3] Some communities actively encourage amateurs to practice writing novels to develop these unique practices, that vary from author to author. For example, the internet-based group,National Novel Writing Month, encourages people to write 50,000-word novels in the month of November, to give novelists practice completing such works. In the 2010 event, over 200,000 people took part – writing a total of over 2.8 billion words.[4]
Novelists do not usually publish theirfirst novels until later in life. However, many novelists begin writing at a young age. For example,Iain Banks began writing at eleven, and at sixteen completed his first novel, "The Hungarian Lift-Jet", about international arms dealers, "in pencil in a larger-than-foolscap log book".[5] However, he was thirty before he published his first novel, the highly controversialThe Wasp Factory in 1984. The success of this novel enabled Banks to become a full-time novelist. Often an important writers'juvenilia, even if not published, is prized by scholars because it provides insight into an author's biography and approach to writing; for example, theBrontë family's juvenilia that depicts their imaginary world ofGondal, currently in theBritish Library, has provided important information on their development as writers.[6][7][8]
Occasionally, novelists publish as early as their teens. For example,Patrick O'Brian published his first novel,Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda-Leopard, at the age of 15, which brought him considerable critical attention.[9] Similarly,Barbara Newhall Follett'sThe House Without Windows, was accepted and published in 1927 when she was 13 by theKnopf publishing house and earned critical acclaim from theNew York Times, theSaturday Review, andH. L. Mencken.[10] Occasionally, these works will achieve popular success as well. For example, thoughChristopher Paolini'sEragon (published at age 15) was not a great critical success, its popularity among readers placed it on theNew York Times Children's Books Best Seller list for 121 weeks.[11]
First-time novelists of any age often are unable to have their works published, because of a number of reasons reflecting the inexperience of the author and the economic realities of publishers. Often authors must find advocates in the publishing industry, usuallyliterary agents, to successfully publish theirdebut novels.[12] Sometimes new novelists willself-publish, because publishing houses will not risk the capital needed to market books by an unknown author to the public.[13][14]
Responding to the difficulty of successfully writing and publishing first novels, especially at a young age, there are a number of awards for young and first time novelists to highlight exceptional works from new and/or young authors (for examples seeCategory:Literary awards honouring young writers andCategory:First book awards).
In contemporary British and American publishing markets, most authors receive only a small monetary advance before publication of their debut novel; in the rare exceptions when a large print run and high volume of sales are anticipated, the advance can be larger.[15] However, once an author has established themselves in print, some authors can make steady income as long as they remain productive as writers. Additionally, many novelists, even published ones, will take on outside work, such asteaching creative writing in academic institutions, or leave novel writing as a secondary hobby.[16][17]
Few novelists become literary celebrities or become very wealthy from the sale of their novels alone. Often those authors who are wealthy and successful will produce extremely popular genre fiction. Examples include authors likeJames Patterson, who was the highest paid author in 2010, making 70 million dollars, topping both other novelists and authors of non-fiction.[18] Other famous literary millionaires include popular successes likeJ. K. Rowling, author of theHarry Potter series,Dan Brown author ofThe Da Vinci Code, historical novelistBernard Cornwell, andTwilight authorStephenie Meyer.
"[the novelist's] honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania [...]
The novelist is the sole master of his work. He is his work."
The personal experiences of the novelist will often shape what they write and how readers and critics will interpret their novels. Literary reception has long relied on practices of reading literature throughbiographical criticism, in which the author's life is presumed to have influence on the topical and thematic concerns of works.[20][21] Some veins of criticism use this information about the novelist to derive an understanding of thenovelist's intentions within his work. However, postmodern literary critics often denounce such an approach; the most notable of these critiques comes fromRoland Barthes who argues in his essay "Death of the Author" that the author no longer should dictate the reception and meaning derived from their work.
Other, theoretical approaches toliterary criticism attempt to explore the author's unintentional influence over their work; methods likepsychoanalytic theory orcultural studies, presume that the work produced by a novelist representsfundamental parts of the author's identity.Milan Kundera describes the tensions between the novelist's own identity and the work that the author produces in his essay inThe New Yorker titled "What is a novelist?"; he says that the novelist's "honesty is bound to the vile stake of his megalomania [...]The work is not simply everything a novelist writes-notebooks, diaries, articles. It is the end result of long labor on an aesthetic project[...]The novelist is the sole master of his work. He is his work."[19] The close intimacy of identity with the novelist's work ensures that particular elements, whether for class, gender, sexuality, nationality, race, or place-based identity, will influence the reception of their work.
Historically, because of the amount of leisure time and education required to write novels, most novelists have come from the upper or the educated middle classes. However, working men and women began publishing novels in the twentieth century. This includes in BritainWalter Greenwood'sLove on the Dole (1933), from AmericaB. Traven's,The Death Ship (1926) andAgnes Smedley,Daughter of Earth (1929) and from the Soviet UnionNikolay Ostrovsky'sHow the Steel Was Tempered (1932). Later, in 1950s Britain, came a group of writers known as the "Angry young men," which included the novelistsAlan Sillitoe andKingsley Amis, who came from the working class and who wrote aboutworking class culture.[22][23]
Some novelists deliberately write for a working class audience for political ends, profiling "the working classes and working-class life; perhaps with the intention of making propaganda".[24] Such literature, sometimes calledproletarian literature, maybe associated with the political agendas of theCommunist party or left wing sympathizers, and seen as a "device of revolution".[25] However, the British tradition of working class literature, unlike the Russian and American, was not especially inspired by the Communist Party, but had its roots in theChartist movement, andsocialism, amongst others.[26]
Novelists are often classified by their national affiliation, suggesting that novels take on a particular character based on the national identity of the authors. In some literature, national identity shapes the self-definition of many novelists. For example, inAmerican literature, many novelists set out to create the "Great American Novel", or a novel that defines the American experience in their time. Other novelists engage politically or socially with the identity of other members of their nationality, and thus help define that national identity. For instance, critic Nicola Minott-Ahl describes Victor Hugo'sNotre-Dame de Paris directly helping in the creation of French political and social identity in mid-nineteenth century France.[27]
Some novelists become intimately linked with a particular place or geographic region and therefore receive aplace-based identity. In his discussion of the history of the association of particular novelists with place inBritish literature, critic D. C. D. Pocock, described the sense of place not developing in that canon until a century after the novel form first solidified at the beginning of the 19th century.[28] Often suchBritish regional literature captures the social and local character of a particular region in Britain, focussing on specific features, such as dialect, customs, history, and landscape (also calledlocal colour): "Such a locale is likely to be rural and/or provincial."[29]Thomas Hardy's (1840–1928) novels can be described as regional because of the way he makes use of these elements in relation to a part of the West of England, that he namesWessex. Other British writers that have been characterized as regional novelists, are theBrontë sisters, and writers likeMary Webb (1881–1927),Margiad Evans (1909–58) andGeraint Goodwin (1903–42), who are associate with theWelsh border region.George Eliot (1801–86) on the other hand is particularly associated with the rural English Midlands, whereasArnold Bennett (1867–1931) is the novelist of thePotteries inStaffordshire, or the "Five Towns", (actually six) that now make-upStoke-on-Trent. Similarly, novelist and poetWalter Scott's (1771–1832) contribution in creating a unified identity forScotland and were some of the most popular in all of Europe during the subsequent century. Scott's novels were influential in recreating a Scottish identity that the upper-class British society could embrace.
In American fiction, the concept ofAmerican literary regionalism ensures that many genres of novel associated with particular regions often define the reception of the novelists. For example, in writingWestern novels,Zane Grey has been described as a "place-defining novelist", credited for defining the western frontier in America consciousness at the beginning of the 20th century while becoming linked as an individual to his depiction of that space.[30]
Similarly, novelist such asMark Twain,William Faulkner,Eudora Welty, andFlannery O'Connor are often describe as writing within a particular tradition ofSouthern literature, in which subject matter relevant to the South is associated with their own identities as authors. For example, William Faulkner set many of his short stories and novels inYoknapatawpha County,[31] which is based on, and nearly geographically identical to, Lafayette County, of which his hometown ofOxford, Mississippi.[32] In addition to the geographical component of Southern literature, certain themes have appeared because of the similar histories of the Southern states in regard toslavery, theAmerican Civil War, andReconstruction. Theconservative culture in the South has also produced a strong focus by novelists from there on the significance of family, religion, community, the use of theSouthern dialect, along with a strong sense of place.[33]The South's troubled history withracial issues has also continually concerned its novelists.[34]
InLatin America a literary movement calledCriollismo or costumbrismo was active from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, which is considered equivalent to American literary regionalism. It used a realist style to portray the scenes, language, customs and manners of the country the writer was from, especially the lower and peasant classes,criollismo led to an original literature based on the continent's natural elements, mostly epic and foundational. It was strongly influenced by the wars of independence fromSpain and also denotes how each country in its own way definescriollo, which inLatin America refers to locally-born people of Spanish ancestry.[35]
Novelists often will be assessed in contemporary criticism based on their gender or treatment of gender. Largely, this has to do with the impacts of cultural expectations of gender on the literary market, readership and authorship.[36][37]Literary criticism, especially since the rise offeminist theory, pays attention to how women, historically, have experienced a very different set of writing expectations based on their gender; for example, the editors ofThe Feminist Companion to Literature in English point out: "Their texts emerge from and intervene in conditions usually very different from those which produced most writing by men."[37] It is not a question of the subject matter or political stance of a particular author, but of hergender: her position as a woman within the literary marketplace. However, the publishing market's orientation to favor the primary reading audience of women may increasingly skew the market towards female novelists; for this reason, novelistTeddy Wayne argued in a 2012Salon article titled "The agony of the male novelist" that midlist male novelists are less likely to find success than midlist female novelist, even though men tend to dominate "literary fiction" spaces.[17]
The position of women in the literary marketplace can change public conversation about novelists and their place within popular culture, leading to debates over sexism. For example, in 2013, American female novelistAmanda Filipacchi wrote a New York Times editorial challenging Wikipedia's categorization of American female novelistswithin a distinct category, which precipitated a significant amount of press coverage describing that Wikipedia's approach to categorization as sexism. For her, the public representation of women novelists within another category marginalizes and defines women novelists like herself outside of a field of "American novelists" dominated by men.[38] However, other commentators, discussing the controversy also note that by removing such categories as "Women novelist" or "Lesbian writer" from the description of gendered or sexual minorities, the discover-ability of those authors plummet for other people who share that identity.[39]
Similarly, because of the conversations brought by feminism, examinations of masculine subjects and an author's performance of "maleness" are a new and increasingly prominent approach critical studies of novels.[40][41] For example, some academics studyingVictorian fiction spend considerable time examining how masculinity shapes and effects the works, because of its prominence within fiction from the Victorian period.[42]
Traditionally, the publishing industry has distinguished between "literary fiction", works lauded as achieving greaterliterary merit, and "genre fiction", novels written within the expectations of genres and published as consumer products.[43] Thus, many novelists become slotted as writers of one or the other.[43] NovelistKim Wright, however, notes that both publishers and traditional literary novelist are turning towards genre fiction because of their potential for financial success and their increasingly positive reception amongst critics.[43] Wright gives examples of authors likeJustin Cronin,Tom Perrotta andColson Whitehead all making that transition.[43]
However, publishing genre novels does not always allow novelist to continue writing outside the genre or within their own interests. In describing the place within the industry, novelistKim Wright says that many authors, especially authors who usually write literary fiction, worry about "the danger that genre is a cul-de-sac" where publishers will only publish similar genre fiction from that author because of reader expectations, "and that once a writer turns into it, he'll never get out."[43] Similarly, very few authors start in genre fiction and move to more "literary" publications; Wright describes novelists likeStephen King as the exception rather than the norm.[43] Other critics and writers defending the merits of genre fiction often point towards King as an example of bridging the gap between popular genres and literary merit.[44][45]
Both literary critics and novelists question what role novelists play in society and within art. For example,Eudora Welty writing in 1965 for in her essay "Must the Novelist Crusade?" draws a distinction between novelists who report reality by "taking life as it already exists, not to report it, but to make an object, toward the end that the finished work might contain this life inside it, and offer it to the reader" and journalists, whose role is to act as "crusaders" advocating for particular positions, and using their craft as a political tool.[46] Similarly, writing in the 1950s,Ralph Ellison in his essay "Society, Morality, and the Novel", sees the novelist as needing to "re-create reality in the forms which his personal vision assumes as it plays and struggles with the vivid illusory "eidetic-like" imagery left in the mind's eye by the process of social change."[47] However, Ellison also describes novelists of theLost Generation, likeErnest Hemingway, not taking full advantage of the moral weight and influence available to novelists, pointing to Mark Twain and Herman Melville as better examples.[47] A number of such essays, such as literary criticFrank Norris's "Responsibilities of a Novelist", highlight such moral and ethical justifications for their approach to both writing novels and criticizing them.[48]
When defining her description of the role of the modernist novelist in the essay "Modern Fiction",Virginia Woolf argues for a representation of life not interested in the exhaustive specific details represented inrealism in favor of representing a "myriad of impressions" created in experience life.[49] Her definition made in this essay, and developed in others, helped define the literary movement ofmodernist literature. She argues that the novelist should represent "not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; [rather] life is luminous halo, a semitransparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of the conscious to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible?"[49]
