The Kreutzer Sonata

According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 15th... century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture. The historical novel was further popularized in the 19th century by writers classified as Romantics. Many regard Sir Walter Scott as the first to write historical novels. György Lukács, in his The Historical Novel, argues that Scott is the first fiction writer who saw history not just as a convenient frame in which to stage a contemporary narrative, but rather as a distinct social and cultural setting. His novels of Scottish history such as Waverley and Rob Roy focus upon a middling character who sits at the intersection of various social groups in order to explore the development of society through conflict. His Ivanhoe gains credit for renewing interest in the Middle Ages. Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame furnishes another 19th century example of the romantic-historical novel as does Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.
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The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary... focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late 20th and early 21st centuries, these novels are commercially in two main varieties: category romances, which are shorter books with a one-month shelf-life, and single-title romances, which are generally longer with a longer shelf-life. Separate from their type, a romance novel can exist within one of many subgenres, including contemporary, historical, science fiction and paranormal. One of the earliest romance novels was Samuel Richardson's popular 1740 novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, which was revolutionary on two counts: it focused almost entirely on courtship and did so entirely from the perspective of a female protagonist. In the next century, Jane Austen expanded the genre, and her Pride and Prejudice is often considered the epitome of the genre. Austen inspired Georgette Heyer, who introduced historical romances in 1921.
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