Fashionable novel
Fashionable novels, also called silver fork novels, were a 19th-century genre of English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class. They dominated the English literature market from the mid-1820s to the mid-1840s.[1] They were often indiscreet, and on occasion "keys" would circulate that identified the real people on which the principal characters were based.[1] Their emphasis on the relations of the sexes and on marital relationships presaged later development in the novel.[2]
Theodore Hook was a major writer of fashionable novels, and Henry Colburn was a major publisher.[1] Colburn particularly advertised them as providing insight into aristocratic life.[3] Catherine Gore was another very popular writer.[4]
William Hazlitt coined the term "silver fork" in an article on “The Dandy School” in 1827.[3] He characterized them as having "under-bred tone" because while they purported to tell the lives of aristocrats, they were commonly written by the middle-class.[3] Thomas Carlyle wrote Sartor Resartus in critique of their minute detailing of clothing, and William Makepeace Thackeray satirized them in Vanity Fair and Pendennis.[3]
As more women wrote the genre, it became increasingly moralized.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Wu, Duncan. A Companion to Romanticism. Blackwell (1998), p338. ISBN 0631218777.
- ^ a b Silver Fork Novels in the Novel Collection
- ^ a b c d Tamara S. Wagner, The Silver Fork Novel
- ^ Catherine Gore 1799(?)-1861
[edit] Further reading
- Cronin, Richard. Romantic Victorians: English Literature, 1824-1840. Macmillan (2002), chapter 4. ISBN 0333966163.
- The Silver Fork Novel at Victorian Web
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