Aspects of the Novel

“I am annoyed when people laugh at me for loving The Swiss Family Robinson , and I hope that I have annoyed some of you over Scott !” Anyone attempting an analysis and evaluation of novels inevitably runs the risk of upsetting those with different literary tastes. E. M. Forster , in his 1927 Clark Lectures, embraced this challenge in this personal yet seminal account of the English novel. The previous decade had seen a number of significant contributions to literary criticism of the novel, and Forster engages with a number of them in his lectures. Yet most of these have been forgotten, while