Abstract

In 1838 Lytton published in the Monthly Chronicle an essay entitled “On Art in Fiction.” This essay is ignored by those who have written on Lytton's narrative art; yet, as it is reprinted in the volume, Pamphlets and Sketches, it takes up thirty-five closely printed pages and deals explicitly with the various parts of the novelist's craft. In it Lytton defines, in terms that apply to prose fiction, the aims of art and the means by which the aims may be achieved. By 1838 he had written twelve novels. The essay represents an experienced novelist's conclusions about the potentialities of his chosen form; and, moreover, it provides us with a measuring stick to set up against his later if not his earlier novels.

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