SOURCE: "From Arthurian Romance to Richardson," in The Development of The English Novel, The Macmillan Company, 1923, pp. 22-5.

In the following excerpt, first published in 1899 and reprinted in 1923, Cross summarizes the course of the English novel from its roots in the seventeenth century—in the French romance, religious and social commentary, diary, biography, and character sketch—to the characteristically "realist" English novel that emerged in the mid-eighteenth century.

The Elizabethans

… Elizabethan England inherited much that was best in English mediæval fiction: the Arthurian romances, the moralized stories of Gower, and the highly finished tales of Chaucer. From Italy came the pastoral romance in its most dreamy and attenuated form, the gorgeous poetic romances of Tasso and Ariosto, and many collections of novelle. Some of these novelle had as subject the interesting events of everyday life; others were of fierce incident and color, and furnished Elizabethan tragedy with...