This chapter presents data on the English novel from 1701 to 1810. Many of the trends in the French novel are shown to be repeated in England, although sometimes on a different timetable. Among the starker differences are a much more rapid decline of pseudofactuality and a more sudden and stronger uptake of the polyphonic epistolary novel. Data also suggest that these differences may be plausibly explained by the fact that the small production of English novels prior to 1750 made for an extremely unstable—and thus more easily modified—novel system.

This chapter examines a type of novel that spreads in the second half of the eighteenth century as the first-person document novel declines. This is a third-person novel that can be shown to be formally distinct from the romans and nouvelles popular before the take-over of document novels. It is characterized notably by its segmentation into chapters and by its use of opening scenes (as distinct from the biographical character sketch). The chapter further shows that while the spread of this form roughly correlates with the “fictionalization” of the novel observed in Chapter 1, truth posture and form are nonetheless independent variables. The new third-person novel was not inherently fictional; rather, it arose only after the value long accorded to literal truth had receded.