A History of the Novel in Britain by Philip Hensher review – a masterpiece of criticism — SkimNews
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- Philip Hensher's "A History of the Novel in Britain" runs 600 pages and traces the novel from Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in 1719 to Zadie Smith in 2000, which the reviewer calls both a masterful critical account and a wonderful read.
- Unlike the typical multi-author academic survey with disconnected chapter silos, Hensher writes the entire history solo, bringing a practicing novelist's eye to craft questions like Dickens's tense choices and Henry James's free indirect style.
- The book offers forensic analysis of early novelists' finances, contrasting Richardson's copyright-retention model (which enabled the 1-million-word epistolary Clarissa in 1748) with Fielding's patron-supported freedom and Austen's flat-fee 1812 sale of Pride and Prejudice, which produced a poorly printed edition readers called "almost unintelligible."
- Hensher rehabilitates neglected figures — Hannah More as "a beautiful and graceful writer," Tobias Smollett as an inventive craftsman, and Arnold Bennett's Old Wives Tale (1908) as one of the 20 greatest novels in English.
- He is equally blunt in demolition, calling Ann Radcliffe "a simply terrible writer," DM Thomas's Booker-nominated The White Hotel "patently untalented," and David Lodge's Changing Places "not up to the task."
- The book argues much 1960–1980 "experimentalism" was a retread: nameless central characters appeared in Fanny Burney in 1814, fragmentary collage in Waugh's Vile Bodies in 1930, and self-reflexivity in Fielding.
- Hensher deliberately stops at 2000 on the principle that proper critical judgment requires decades of distance.
Why it matters: For readers of the British novel, this offers a rare single-author critical synthesis; Hensher's novelist's perspective means it engages with craft (tense, voice, financial model) rather than reading as a textbook. His choice to halt at 2000 is itself a quiet rebuke to a literary culture that canonizes prize winners within months.
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