What is a novel?
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction , typically written in prose and published as a book . The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the Italian : novella for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the Latin : novella , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus , diminutive of novus , meaning "new". [1] Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne , [2] Herman Melville , [3] Ann Radcliffe , [4] John Cowper Powys , [5] preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody , the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel , in Chivalric romance , and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella . [6] ...
