SOURCE: "Rise of Realism," in PMLA, N.s., Vol. XXI, No. 1, 1913, pp. 213-52.

In the following essay, Tieje unearths in fiction previous to Richardson a "striving toward a crude form of realism," which he defines as an author's desire "to gain the implicit credence of the reader"—that is, strategies and styles fashioned to convince the reader that the story is factual rather than imaginative.

No investigator of the expressed theory of pre-Richardsonian fiction need labor long before he discovers that all the declared aims of writers of prose fiction may probably be reduced to five: desire to entertain the reader, to edify him, to impart information to him, to depict life for him, to arouse his emotions. Gradually, however, if the student analyze these intentions, he will become aware of what might be called a sixth expressed aim—the conscious effort of an author to gain the...