After her father complained about its depiction of a marriage between a black servant and a white maid, Maria Edgeworth “removed the romance” from the second edition of Belinda.

PHILIP HENSHER’s grandmothers were alike in several respects. Both left school at 14. Both then began “hard, manual work in factories”. Neither “ever grew rich, or even comfortable”. But they were linked in another, more intangible way: “they loved novels.”

In view of this backstory, it is not surprising that Hensher is known to admire and defend the art of novel writing and the practice of novel reading. He is himself a prizewinning novelist, and a professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University, for whom spending time with fiction “has never been a labour”. Yet with A History of the Novel in Britain, he has surely made his most powerful case yet for the form, both as it once was and as it came to be.

Get Instant Access

Continue Reading

Register for free to read this article in full

REGISTER

Subscribe for unlimited access

SUBSCRIBE NOW

From just £37.50 quarterly

  Print copy of The Tablet delivered directly to your door.
  Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
  Access to the weekly digital copy of The Tablet.
  Full access to The Tablet’s archive – over 180 years of back issues.

Already a subscriber? Login