18th century novel:

The 18th century novel was labelled as realistic novel in which the characters were
real people with ordinary names and surnames who were portrayed in their daily
lives, the settings were real geographical locations, and the contents were based on
true stories. The novelists, unlike the early Augustans, preferred to write about
ordinary citizens in real-life circumstances. The novelists attempted to connect
with their middle-class readers, who enjoyed reading about ordinary people
because it allowed them to see themselves as characters in the stories. The most
important novelists of the time were: Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel
Richardson, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne.
DANIEL DEFOE:
Daniel Defoe is regarded as the father of the modern novel, as well as the first
novelist and journalist in English literature. He represented the 18th century world
by interpreting the likes and desires of the emerging middle class. De Foe's
characters are ordinary men and women with whom his middle-class readers will
empathize. From Moll Flanders, a slut, rapist, and incestuous wife, to Robinson
Crusoe, Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton, and Roxana, all of the characters in his
novel narrate their individual struggles for survival in a difficult world.
Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of
Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner is considered the first English book. The book
is a true realistic novel, as it is based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, a
Scotch sailor who lived alone for five years after a shipwreck on the Pacific island
of Juan Fernandez. In the context of a diary, the story is told in the first person
singular. Robinson Crusoe is the first narrative in which the character is not a hero,
but an average man.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON:
He is regarded as the father of the romantic study novel and the inventor of the
epistolary novel. He included psychological studies of the characters, especially
the female characters. He began his career as a novelist late in life, when some
booksellers asked him to assist the uneducated in their correspondence by writing a
series of letters about daily topics. Some of the letters were to teach pretty servant-
girls about how to preserve their virtue. He decided to turn the letters into a book,
and Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, was born. He chose a true story about a virtuous
15-year-old maidservant who served in a wealthy household and resisted her
master's advances.
Richardson’s success in his own age is mostly due to the subject matter of his
novels, and to the technique of narration he used. As far as the former, that is the
theme of women who defend their virtues from the advances of a powerful man, it
appealed to a vast audience, above all women who constituted the larger part of the
reading public. The other element was the suspense created by the technique that
Richardson used. He himself defined it as “writing to the moment”.
HENRY FIELDING:
He was the first writer in England to have a burlesque element in his work. His
novels are described as a "comic epic poem in prose," according to him. The mock
epic is a satire of the epic since it portrays insignificant events as though they were
important. A series of ostensibly dangerous adventures surround the character. De
Foe and Richardson were not like Fielding. He was a member of the nobility, but
he did not hold sexual chastity above all other virtues. An Apology for the Life of
Mrs. Shamela Andrews, his first book, is both a reaction to Richardson's Pamela
and a reaction to the hypocrisy of the time. The name Shamela is a pun on the
words "shame" and "Pamela."
In his second book, Joseph Andrews, he intended to spoof Richardson's Pamela,
but he abandoned that plan and instead wrote a story about Joseph, Pamela's
brother and a friend of his. In this case, we have a young man who works at a
lady's and tries to seduce him after her husband's death. Joseph, being chaste and
upright, declines her advances.
Tom Jones, his best novel, is a picture of the life of the lower and upper classes of
the 18th century society. Fielding depicts with humor and irony human weaknesses
and stresses his tolerant attitude towards them.