Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Evidence enough has been adduced to show that sensation novels must be recognised as a great fact in the literature of the day, and a fact whose significance is by no means of an agreeable kind. Regarding these works merely as an efflorescence, as an eruption indicative of the state of health of the body in which they appear, the existence of an impure or a silly crop of novels, and the fact that they are eagerly read, are by no means favourable symptoms of the conditions of the body of society. But it is easier to detect the disease than to suggest the remedy. (Henry Mansel 1863: 267) There has arisen of late years a popular idea as to the division of novels into two classes, which is, I think, a mistaken idea. We hear of the sensational school of novels; and of the realistic, or life-like school. Now, according to my view of the matter, a novel is bound to be both sensational and realistic. And I think that if a novel fail in either particular it is, so far, a failure in Art…. Let an author so tell his tale as to touch your heart and draw your tears, and he has so far done his work well. Truth let there be; – truth of description, truth of character, human truth as to men and women. If there be such truth I do not know that a novel can be too sensational” ( Anthony Trollope 1870 : 124) “We have become a novel reading people” observed Anthony Trollope in 1870, who certainly contributed ... log in or subscribe to read full text