Novel

File:'The Lighthouse at the End of the World' by George Roux 01.jpg

"The Lighthouse at the End of the World" is a novel by Jules Verne, who is considered as the father of science fiction.

Novels are books that have one long story written in them. They are works of prose fiction and are longer than short stories and novellas.

There are many kinds of novels. For example, some are adventure stories, like Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. There are horror stories like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. There are also science fiction novels like Dune by Frank Herbert, and humorous novels like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Novels in English are usually at least 60,000 words long. Some are much longer, at 150,000 words or more. Novels usually have 100 pages or more.

The first novels were written more than three hundred years ago. Some people say that Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is the first novel; it was first published in 1605.

Genres of novels

There are many different genres, or categories, of novels. Some of these are:

Novel Media

Madame de Pompadour.jpg

Madame de Pompadour spending her afternoon with a book (François Boucher, 1756)
Tosa Mitsuoki—Portrait of Murasaki Shikibu.jpg

Paper as the essential carrier: Murasaki Shikibu writing her The Tale of Genji in the early 11th century, 17th-century depiction
The You Xian Ku by Zhang Zhuo
1474: The customer in the copyist's shop with a book he wants to have copied. This illustration of the first printed German Melusine looked back to the market of manuscripts.
Richard Head 1666.png

Richard Head, The English Rogue (1665)
1719-heathcot-robinson-crusoe.png

1719 newspaper reprint of Robinson Crusoe
1769 Laurence Sterne Tristram Shandy v6 p70.jpg

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vol.6, pp. 70–71 (1769)
Richardson pamela 1741.jpg

Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1741)
1711 The Court and City Vagaries.jpg

Intimate short stories: The Court and City Vagaries (1711).