Excerpt from Great English Novelists Besides this, I have tried, as far as is possible with out destroying their independence, to link each essay together in an informal and unobtrusive way, so that the writers dealt with shall appear in their correct perspective as a series of events in the history of the novel. The book may therefore stand, in a secondary sense, as an introduction to the study of the English novel, from the period in which it first attained a separate consciousness in Defoe, to the present day, in which it has become a highly com plex and exacting art. And, although the conditions of the present series have necessitated the omission of several novelists, have tried to preserve a clear view of the broad evolutionary path of the novel. My object has not been to deal with every great novelist, and, within my space, I have chosen only those who have contributed something essential to wards making the English novel what it is. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.