Novel

Novel: A new type of narrative beginning in the 18th Century. Authors such as Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding "saw themselves as founders of a new kind of writing," prominent literary critic Ian Watt famously observed (9). But "our usage of the term 'novel' was not fully established until the end of the eighteenth century" (Watt 10). The distinguishing feature initially of this new form of writing from fiction prior to the early eighteenth century is "realism" (Watt 10). The novel "attempts to portray all the varieties of human experience, and not merely those suited to one particular literary perspective: the novel's realism does not preside in the kind of life it presents, but in the way it presents it" (Watt 11).

-- For further reading, please read the seminal text The Rise of the Novel.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. U of California P, 1957.

A novel can be defined as a substantial narrative with many characters and a plot that stretches over a long time span (not always) and may have many settings. There are many sub-categories. Adapted from Lumen Learning's Introduction to Literature