The Rise of the European Novel

Classic Literature II: Medieval & Early Modern

Course 2 · Chapter 8 · The Rise of the European Novel

This is the third time this course has run into a "first novel" claim — Genji, then Don Quixote, now 18th-century England. This time the debate has genuinely changed shape: less about which single book deserves the title, more about whose books get counted in the running at all.

Robinson Crusoe: Fiction Presented as Fact

Published as a "True" Memoir

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was published on 25 April 1719 — anonymously, and presented as a genuine first-person memoir rather than an explicitly marketed work of fiction. Many contemporary readers initially believed it really was a true account.

The real castaway most closely associated with it is Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor voluntarily put ashore on Más a Tierra, in the Juan Fernández Islands, in September 1704 after a dispute with his ship's captain — rescued in February 1709 by an expedition led by Woodes Rogers. Rogers' own 1712 account and Richard Steele's December 1713 retelling in The Englishman both predate Defoe's novel.

A real connection, often overstated — Defoe almost certainly knew Selkirk's story, but scholars caution against treating him as Crusoe's sole inspiration. Crusoe is shipwrecked, not voluntarily marooned like Selkirk, and Defoe was demonstrably familiar with many other survival narratives of the era. Modern Defoe scholarship pushes back against a simple, direct one-to-one reading of Selkirk as "the real Crusoe."

Gulliver's Travels: Satire Disguised as Adventure

Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, published anonymously in 1726, is a four-part prose satire narrated by Lemuel Gulliver across voyages to Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms. Swift himself described it as built on "a great foundation of Misanthropy," intended "to vex the world" — a genuinely sharp satire of British politics, scientific pretension, and colonial rule, including Ireland's own treatment, not merely a fantastical adventure story.

Pamela and Clarissa: Richardson's Epistolary Revolution

Told Entirely Through Letters

Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (November 1740) is written in epistolary form — told through a series of letters. It became the era's first genuine best-seller, and is widely credited as foundational to the sentimental, domestic novel of real psychological interiority.

Richardson's later novel, Clarissa (1748), is commonly cited as the longest novel in the English language — roughly 984,000 words, growing to over a million words across roughly 1,534 pages in Richardson's own revised third edition.

"The First English Novel"? The Debate Has Changed Shape

🔮 A Different Kind of Contested Claim Genji (Chapter 1) and Don Quixote (Chapter 7) each carried a single, contested "first novel" label. The English debate is genuinely more layered: real competing candidates include Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) — predating Crusoe by 31 years — John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678), and even Defoe's own later Moll Flanders (1722). The disagreement hinges less on undisputed dates and more on genuinely differing definitions of what actually counts as a "novel" — realism, length, psychological depth, prose versus verse, and whether a fictional-but-nonfiction-framed narrative like Crusoe even qualifies at all.

A canon being actively corrected — women writers from the same period, including Behn, Eliza Haywood, Margaret Cavendish, and Charlotte Lennox, are increasingly foregrounded in this debate as a genuine, ongoing corrective to an older, male-centric telling of the English novel's own origin story.

Building an Audience: Coffeehouses and Periodicals

The novel's rise didn't happen in isolation. Richard Steele founded The Tatler in 1709, publishing three times a week; Joseph Addison joined him, and together they launched The Spectator in 1711, publishing six days a week at roughly 2,500 words an issue. Both periodicals were closely tied to London's coffeehouse culture, and became genuinely aspirational household items for a rising middle class — building exactly the kind of reading audience and print infrastructure the novel itself needed to flourish.

Real Candidates for "First English Novel"

Work	Date	Author
The Pilgrim's Progress	1678	John Bunyan
Oroonoko	1688	Aphra Behn
Robinson Crusoe	1719	Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders	1722	Daniel Defoe
Pamela	1740	Samuel Richardson

Questions to Sit With

Reflection 1

Robinson Crusoe was originally read as a true story. Does knowing it was actually fiction change how you'd read it today, or does a compelling narrative work the same way regardless of its factual status?

Reflection 2

Aphra Behn's Oroonoko predates Robinson Crusoe by over three decades, yet Crusoe is still far more commonly cited as "the first English novel." What do you think explains that gap between the historical record and popular memory?

Reflection 3

This course has now hit three separate "first novel" debates, in three unrelated traditions. Having seen the pattern repeat itself this many times, what do you think "the first novel" actually tells us — about the book being described, or about the culture doing the describing?

Quick Reference — Chapter 8

Robinson Crusoe (1719) — published anonymously, presented as a true memoir; connected to, but not simply based on, Alexander Selkirk's real 1704–1709 marooning
Gulliver's Travels (1726) — a genuine political and social satire framed as a fantastical travel narrative
Pamela (1740) — Richardson's epistolary novel, foundational to psychological/domestic realism; Clarissa (1748) is among the longest novels in English
The "first English novel" debate is genuinely contested and includes real, often-overlooked candidates like Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688), predating Crusoe by 31 years
The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711) helped build the reading audience and print culture the novel needed to flourish

What's Next

Chapter 9: Enlightenment Literature and Satire.