The last ground-breaking novel of the era. It was the work of a revolutionary philosopher – William Godwin. In 1793 Godwin’s essay An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice introduced the idea of anarchism. The following year he published a novel Caleb Williams. ibid.
In the real world villains alarm us. But what we find repugnant in life can in a novel become oddly alluring. The fictional villain can say things we can’t. And can do things we don’t. This makes them the characters we most enjoy. But the great thing about villains in the novel is that they know what is going on. Faulks on Fiction 4/4: The Villains, BBC 2011
The villain is the author’s accomplice driving the plot forward. ibid.
The fictional villain could resemble a hero. ibid.
There is no doubt who is the star of the show, and that is Fagin. ibid.
But Dickens didn’t only make Fagin a nasty piece of work. He also made him a Jew. And that was a decision that would trouble him for the rest of his life. ibid.
Now the villain was to be an even more unlikely figure, one who initially looks like an angel in Paradise. At first sight it would seem an idyllic setting. An island deserted apart from a handful of innocent schoolboys. Yet it was here that William Golding proposed to look evil straight in the face. And that face belonged to perhaps the most shocking villain in British fiction – a twelve-year-old choirboy called Jack Meridew. ibid.
The draw of the supernatural proved addictive to readers of fiction. ibid.
When I want to read a novel, I write one. Benjamin Disraeli
A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent. Logan Pearsall Smith, Afterthoughts
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. ibid.
The principle of procrastinated rape is said to be the ruling one in all the great best-sellers. V S Pritchett, The Living Novel, 1946
The detective novel is the art-for-art’s-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on. V S Pritchett, New Statesman 16th June 1951
The regular resource of people who don’t go enough into the world to live a novel is to write one. Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes
A novel is an impression, not an argument. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The business of the poet and novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things, and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things. Thomas Hardy, notebook entry 19th April 1885
If this sort of thing continues, no more novel-writing for me. A man must be a fool to deliberately stand up and be shot at. Thomas Hardy, re hostile reviews of Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language. The more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
If you try to nail anything down in the novel, either it will kill the novel, or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail. D H Lawrence, Phoenix, 1936
Morality in the novel is the trembling instability of the balance. When the novelist puts his thumb in the scale, to pull down the balance to his own predilection, that is immorality. ibid.
In the past, in old novels, the price of love was death, a price which virtuous women paid in childbirth, and the wicked, like Nana, with the pox. Nowadays it is paid in thrombosis or neurosis: one can take one’s pick. Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall, 1969
A novel can hardly be made interesting or successful without love ... It is necessary because the passion is one which interests or has interested all. Everyone feels it, has felt it, or expects to feel it. Anthony Trollope, Autobiography, 1883
All novelists know their art proceeds by indirection. Julian Barnes
The few really great – the major novelists ... are significant in terms of the human awareness they promote, awareness of the possibilities of life. F R Leavis, The Great Tradition, 1948
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. Saul Bellow
When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything great I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one’s heart and brings its own reward. L Frank Baum
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel must be intolerably stupid. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
He is a wonderfully accomplished man – most extraordinarily accomplished – reads – hem – reads every novel that comes out; I mean every novel that – hem – that has any fashion in it, of course. The fact is, that he did find so much in the books he read, applicable to his own misfortunes, and did find himself in every respect so much like the heroes – because of course he is conscious of his own superiority, as we all are, and very naturally – that he took to scorning everything, and became a genius. Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
When it comes to stories of crime and detection we have long been a nation obsessed. But why do we British so enjoy reading about a spot of murder? … These familiar components give us that comforting feeling of the classic whodunnit. Andrew Marr, Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers I: Detective, BBC 2016
Rule 1: A Mystery Begins With a Mystery. ibid.
The Duchess of Death herself: Agatha Christie … The rules of ordinary life have suddenly been suspended. ibid.
The quintessential location is the country house. ibid.
The rules of the detective novel are the rules of a game. ibid.
The first great sleuth in detective fiction is Sherlock Holmes. ibid.
So what makes Sherlock Holmes so irresistible? ibid.
Rule 5: The Crime Must Be Credible. ibid.
Christie used poisons more often than any other crime writer. ibid.
What is it about the unreal, almost childish world of magic, swords, and quests that entrances adults too? Could mere escapism capture so much of the reading world? Fantasy is a form of fiction for people who like to see all the ordinary rules smashed. Andrew Marr, Sleuths, Spies & Sorcerers II: Fantasy
Allowing us to see our own world in a fresh and surprising world through a twisted, Gothic filter. ibid.
A phenomenally successful television series … Game of Thrones started life as a series of fantasy novels by the writer George R R Martin called A Song of Ice and Fire. ibid.
The ultimate world-builder was J R R Tolkien. His Hobbit and Lord of the Rings books are the most famous in all fantasy. He built worlds of enormous scale and complexity but he attacked them in a different way. His approach to world-building revolved around his fascination with languages. ibid.
Rule 2: Draw a Map: the Map drives the whole story. ibid.
The old stories which gave them [C S Lewis & J R R Tolkien] the tools for their own fiction. But the two friends approached fantasy writing in diverging worlds. ibid.
Rule 3: Step Through a Portal Into a Fantasy Land. ibid.
Fantasy evolved very fast … Le Guin was taking fantasy her own way. She even did evil differently. ibid.
Rowling’s Harry Potter series are amongst the best selling books of all time. ibid.
[Philip] Pullman’s work is unmistakably a direct counter, a rebuke, to C S Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. ibid.
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods: ‘What it would mean to be a god right now, what it would mean to be driven by belief.’ ibid. interview Gaiman
‘For making metaphors concrete, for making them solid and allowing you to look at the things that are intangible; you’re taking a fantastical idea and you’re taking it seriously, but you’re also allowing it to comment on the world in a way that you can’t.’ ibid. Gaiman
Rule 11: Mirror the Real World. ibid.
In [Pratchett’s] Mort, Death experiences the delights of an employment agency interview. ibid.
A sense of a lost world, that the glory days are over … deep poignant melancholy. ibid.
In an age of mass surveillance spies may be easier to spot. But how about a spy novelist, and in one of their traditional clubby haunts? … A British invention, and has mirrored much of our recent history: the espionage novel. Andrew Marr, Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers III: Spies
Espionage novels also have a strange allure. Because at their heart are rich dark ideas about betrayal, deception, identity and courage. Who among us has not lied or felt betrayed? ibid.
Le Carré already had two novels under his belt in which he had introduced his enigmatic little buddha George Smiley. ibid.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold – which would in effect redefine spy fiction. ibid.