Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: How many novels did Charles Dickens write?
Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed readings extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Sometime in the mid 1840s, the botanist Charles Alexander Johns saw Stackhouse's watercolours and asked her to provide illustrations for a series of popular natural history books that he was publishing through the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The first two were "Forest Trees of Britain" (1847) and "A Week at the Lizard" (1848, focusing on the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall); in both, some of the illustrations were engravings based on watercolours by Stackhouse, uncredited, but signed 'E.S.' This was followed by Johns's best-known book, "Flowers of the Field", published in two volumes in 1851 with over 200 uncredited illustrations by Stackhouse. Referred to as "the bible of the amateur botanist," its success was such that it went into more than 50 editions and was still in print a century after it first came out. In addition, after Johns and Stackhouse were dead, the SPCK continued to use Stackhouse's images in other books; it is estimated that they had been printed in at least 15 and as many as 30 different books by the end of the 19th century.
At the ending of the book, there is also a brief afterword, which King wrote on January 4, 1982. In it, he explains why he had not previously submitted the novellas (each written at a different time) for publication. Early in his career, his agents and editors expressed concern that he would be "written off" as someone who only wrote horror. However, his horror novels turned out to be quite popular and made him much in demand as a novelist. Conversely, the novellas, which did not deal (primarily) with the supernatural, were very difficult to publish as there was not a mass market for "straight" fiction stories in the 25,000- to 35,000-word format. Thus, King and his editor conceived the idea of publishing the novellas together as "something different", hence the title of the book.
Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The story takes place in the fictional village of Highbury and the surrounding estates of Hartfield, Randalls, and Donwell Abbey and involves the relationships among individuals in those locations consisting of "3 or 4 families in a country village". The novel was first published in December 1815 while the author was alive, with its title page listing a publication date of 1816. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters and depicts issues of marriage, gender, age, and social status.
The request for a sequel prompted Tolkien to begin what would become his most famous work: the epic novel "The Lord of the Rings" (originally published in three volumes 1954–1955). Tolkien spent more than ten years writing the primary narrative and appendices for "The Lord of the Rings", during which time he received the constant support of the Inklings, in particular his closest friend C. S. Lewis, the author of "The Chronicles of Narnia". Both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are set against the background of "The Silmarillion", but in a time long after it.
The fictional journalist Bridget Jones (in reality Helen Fielding of "The Independent") wrote of her love of the serial in the paper's "Bridget Jones's Diary" column during the original British broadcast, mentioning her "simple human need for Darcy to get off with Elizabeth" and regarding the couple as her "chosen representatives in the field of shagging, or rather courtship". Fielding loosely reworked the plot of "Pride And Prejudice" in her 1996 novel of the column, naming Bridget's uptight love interest "Mark Darcy" and describing him exactly like Colin Firth. Following a first meeting with Firth during his filming of "Fever Pitch" in 1996, Fielding asked Firth to collaborate in what would become a multi-page interview between Bridget Jones and Firth in her 1999 sequel novel, "". Conducting the real interview with Firth in Rome, Fielding lapsed into Bridget Jones mode and obsessed over Darcy in his wet shirt for the fictional interview. Firth participated in the editing of what critics called "one of the funniest sequences in the diary's sequel". Both novels make various other references to the BBC serial.
During the Second World War, Christie wrote two novels, "Curtain" and "Sleeping Murder", intended as the last cases of these two great detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Both books were sealed in a bank vault for over thirty years and were released for publication by Christie only at the end of her life, when she realised that she could not write any more novels. These publications came on the heels of the success of the film version of "Murder on the Orient Express" in 1974.
Fitzwilliam Darcy, generally referred to as Mr. Darcy, is one of the two central characters in Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice". He is an archetype of the aloof romantic hero, and a romantic interest of Elizabeth Bennet, the novel's protagonist. The story's narration is almost exclusively from Elizabeth's perspective; the reader is given a one-sided view of Darcy for much of the novel, but hints are given throughout that there is much more to his good character than meets the eye. The reader gets a healthy dose of dramatic irony as Elizabeth continually censures (with some prejudice) Mr. Darcy's character despite the aforementioned hints (via the narrative voice and other characters' observations) that Mr. Darcy is really a noble character at heart, albeit somewhat prideful. Usually referred to only as "Mr. Darcy" or "Darcy" by characters and the narrator, his first name is mentioned twice in the novel.
A novella generally features fewer conflicts than a novel, yet more complicated ones than a short story. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. Novellas may or may not be divided into chapters (good examples of those with chapters are "Animal Farm" by George Orwell and "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells) and are often intended to be read at a single sitting, as is the short story, although in a novella white space is often used to divide the sections, and therefore, the novella maintains a single effect. Warren Cariou wrote:
Sherlock Holmes is British detective fiction written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes is at “A study in Scarlet”. At first, Sherlock Holmes did not result massive success, however starting from 1891, after published Sherlock Holmes at “Strand Magazine”, it became unquestionably popular. After Sherlock Holmes, many detective stories followed Conan Doyle’s structure and also include characters which have Sherlock Holmes characteristics.
The novel as a whole is one of the longest ever written, with approximately 1,500 pages in unabridged English-language editions, and 1,900 pages in French. Hugo explained his ambitions for the novel to his Italian publisher:
More than a quarter of the novel—by one count 955 of 2,783 pages—is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge, but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot, a method Hugo used in such other works as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Toilers of the Sea". One biographer noted that "the digressions of genius are easily pardoned". The topics Hugo addresses include cloistered religious orders, the construction of the Paris sewers, argot, and the street urchins of Paris. The one about convents he titles "Parenthesis" to alert the reader to its irrelevance to the story line.
This is a list of the longest novels over 500,000 words published through a mainstream publisher. The longest novel is "Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus", originally published (1649–54) in ten parts, each part in three volumes. "Artamène" is generally attributed to Madeleine de Scudéry.
The Buccaneers is the last novel written by Edith Wharton. The novel is set in the 1870s, around the time Edith Wharton was a young girl. It was unfinished at the time of her death in 1937, and published in that form in 1938. Wharton's manuscript ends with Lizzy inviting Nan to a house party to which Guy Thwarte has also been invited. The book was published in 1938 by Penguin Books in New York. After some time, Marion Mainwaring finished the novel following Wharton's detailed outline of the novel in 1993.
She taught in schools in both Indianapolis and Chicago. She wrote for the "Chicago Tribune" under the pseudonym "Nora Marks" from 1888 to 1890, and later became publisher of the Little Chronicle Publishing Company, Chicago; this published several of her own works, along with other educational books and the "Little Chronicle", an illustrated newspaper intended for young children. Whilst she wrote both fiction and non-fiction, the former mostly romances and the latter mostly educational books, she is best known for her 1912 novel "Greyfriars Bobby". This popular work recounted the famous story of the eponymous dog; most of the modern versions of the story seem to stem from her form of the tale. Many details of the book, especially those regarding the dog's master are inaccurate; until recently it was assumed that she had no opportunity for original research of her setting. It seems likely that she worked from the basic story and embellished it from her own imagination. The story, however, "is" lovingly detailed; the descriptions of the geography may be somewhat confused, but effort was clearly made to get names correct, and to get across the atmosphere of the city. Unusually for someone with no connection to the country, her portrayal of the local accent was convincing and strongly phrased; this suggests it is possible she picked up the story directly from Scottish immigrants to the Midwest.
A novella is a text of written, fictional, narrative prose normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel, somewhere between 17,500 and 40,000 words.
Fourteen women have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, more than any other Nobel Prize with the exception of the Nobel Peace Prize. There have been four instances in which the award was given to two people (1904, 1917, 1966, 1974). There have been eight years in which the Nobel Prize in Literature was not awarded (1914, 1918, 1935, 1940–1943, 2018). The country with the most recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature is France with 16, followed by the United States with 12 and the United Kingdom with 11.
During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen published four generally well-received novels. Through her brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish "Sense and Sensibility", which, like all of Jane Austen's novels except "Pride and Prejudice", was published "on commission", that is, at the author's financial risk. When publishing on commission, publishers would advance the costs of publication, repay themselves as books were sold and then charge a 10% commission for each book sold, paying the rest to the author. If a novel did not recover its costs through sales, the author was responsible for them. The alternative to selling via commission was the selling the copyright, where an author received a one-time payment from the publisher for the manuscript, which occurred with "Pride and Prejudice". Austen's experience with "Susan" (the manuscript that became "Northanger Abbey") where she sold the copyright to the publisher Crosby & Sons for £10, who did not publish the book, forcing her to buy back the copyright in order to get her work published, left Austen leery of this method of publishing. The final alternative, of selling by subscription, where a group of people would agree to buy a book in advance, was not an option for Austen as only authors who were well known or had an influential aristocratic patron who would recommend an up-coming book to their friends, could sell by subscription. "Sense and Sensibility" appeared in October 1811, and was described as being written "By a Lady". As it was sold on commission, Egerton used expensive paper and set the price at 15 shillings.
Reviews were favourable and the novel became fashionable among young aristocratic opinion-makers; the edition sold out by mid-1813. Austen's novels were published in larger editions than was normal for this period. The small size of the novel-reading public and the large costs associated with hand production (particularly the cost of handmade paper) meant that most novels were published in editions of 500 copies or less to reduce the risks to the publisher and the novelist. Even some of the most successful titles during this period were issued in editions of not more than 750 or 800 copies and later reprinted if demand continued. Austen's novels were published in larger editions, ranging from about 750 copies of "Sense and Sensibility" to about 2,000 copies of "Emma". It is not clear whether the decision to print more copies than usual of Austen's novels was driven by the publishers or the author. Since all but one of Austen's books were originally published "on commission", the risks of overproduction were largely hers (or Cassandra's after her death) and publishers may have been more willing to produce larger editions than was normal practice when their own funds were at risk. Editions of popular works of non-fiction were often much larger.
Excluded are self-published, printed-on-demand, vanity works, unpublished novels like Henry Darger's, novel sequences like the "Chronicles of Barsetshire", novel cycles such as those set in the "James Bond" universe, and record-grabbing stunts written solely for the title of the longest work.
Robert Hendrickson notes in his book "British Literary Anecdotes" that "Swift was always partial to his strikingly original "The Tale of a Tub" (1704). On reading the work again in later years, he exclaimed 'Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book!'"
Originally issued as a three-part serial story in "Blackwood's Magazine" to celebrate the thousandth edition of the magazine, "Heart of Darkness" has been widely re-published and translated into many languages. Most famously, the story provided the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film "Apocalypse Now". In 1998, the Modern Library ranked "Heart of Darkness" 67th on their list of the 100 best novels in English of the twentieth century.
Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 romantic novel by Jane Austen. It charts the emotional development of the protagonist Elizabeth Bennet, who learns the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between the superficial and the essential. The comedy of the writing lies in the depiction of manners, education, marriage and money during the Regency era in Britain.
The bibliography of Charles Dickens (1812–70) includes more than a dozen major novels, a large number of short stories (including Christmas-themed stories and ghost stories), several plays, several non-fiction books, and individual essays and articles. Dickens's novels were serialized initially in weekly or monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.
In November 1836, Dickens accepted the position of editor of "Bentley's Miscellany", a position he held for three years, until he fell out with the owner. In 1836 as he finished the last instalments of "The Pickwick Papers", he began writing the beginning instalments of "Oliver Twist"—writing as many as 90 pages a month—while continuing work on "Bentley's" and also writing four plays, the production of which he oversaw. "Oliver Twist", published in 1838, became one of Dickens's better known stories, and was the first Victorian novel with a child protagonist.
Dickens published well over a dozen major novels and novellas, a large number of short stories, including a number of Christmas-themed stories, a handful of plays, and several non-fiction books. Dickens's novels were initially serialised in weekly and monthly magazines, then reprinted in standard book formats.
A pioneer of serialised fiction, most of Dickens's major novels were first written in monthly or weekly instalments in journals such as "Master Humphrey's Clock" and "Household Words", later reprinted in book form. These instalments made the stories affordable and accessible, and the series of regular cliffhangers made each new episode widely anticipated. When "The Old Curiosity Shop" was being serialised, American fans waited at the docks in New York harbor, shouting out to the crew of an incoming British ship, "Is little Nell dead?" Dickens's talent was to incorporate this episodic writing style but still end up with a coherent novel at the end.