A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book.

[1]
The English word to describe such a work 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".[2] 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, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the
Italian Renaissance novella.[3] The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in
the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel.[4]

Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne,[5] Herman Melville,[6] Ann Radcliffe,[7] and John
Cowper Powys,[8] preferred the term "romance". M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that
a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the
romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon
incidents.[9][10][11] Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also novels,
including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,[12] J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,[13] and Harper
Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.[14] Such "romances" should not be confused with the genre
fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love.

Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been
described as the world's first novel, because of its early use of the experience of intimacy in a
narrative form. There is considerable debate over this, however, as there were certainly long
fictional prose works that preceded it. The spread of printed books in China led to the
appearance of classical Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing
dynasty (1616-1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by
the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain.[15] Later developments occurred after the invention of
the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was
published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era.
[16]
Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was
born in the early 18th century.

Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print
media: this includes audio books, web novels, and ebooks. Another non-traditional fiction format
can be