Fashionable novels, also called silver-fork novels, were a 19th-century genre of English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class and the aristocracy.
Fashionable novels, also called silver-fork novels, were a 19th-century genre of English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class and the aristocracy.
The silver-fork novels dominated the English literature market from the mid-1820s to the mid-1840s. [1] They were often indiscreet, and on occasion "keys" would circulate that identified the real people on which the principal characters were based. [1] Their emphasis on the relations of the sexes and on marital relationships presaged later development in the novel. [2]
Theodore Hook was a major writer of fashionable novels, and Henry Colburn was a major publisher. [1] Colburn particularly advertised fashionable novels as providing insight into aristocratic life by insiders. [3] Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Benjamin Disraeli and Catherine Gore were other very popular writers of the genre. [4] Many were advertised as being written by aristocrats, for aristocrats. [5]
As more women wrote the genre, it became increasingly moralized: "middle-class morality became central, and the novels detailed the demise of the aristocracy, though the characteristically Byronic heroes of the genre remained." [2] The most popular authors of silver fork novels were women, including Lady Blessington, Catherine Gore and Lady Bury. [2]
William Hazlitt coined the term "silver fork" in an article on "The Dandy School" in 1827. [3] He characterized them as having "under-bred tone" because while they purported to tell the lives of aristocrats, they were commonly written by the middle-class. [3] Thomas Carlyle wrote Sartor Resartus in critique of their minute detailing of clothing, and William Makepeace Thackeray satirized them in Vanity Fair and Pendennis . [3]
In Donna Leon's fourth Commissario Guido Brunetti novel, Death and Judgment, English professor Paola Brunetti describes silver-fork novels as "books written in the eighteenth century, when all that money poured into England from the colonies, and the fat wives of Yorkshire weavers had to be taught which fork to use." [6]
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, PC was an English writer and politician. He served as a Whig member of Parliament from 1831 to 1841 and a Conservative from 1851 to 1866. He was Secretary of State for the Colonies from June 1858 to June 1859, choosing Richard Clement Moody as founder of British Columbia. He declined the Crown of Greece in 1862 after King Otto abdicated. He was created Baron Lytton of Knebworth in 1866.
Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby,, styled Viscount Normanby between 1812 and 1831 and known as The Earl of Mulgrave between 1831 and 1838, was a British Whig politician and author. He notably served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1835 to 1839 and as Home Secretary from 1839 to 1841 and was British Ambassador to France between 1846 and 1852.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1832.
Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, was an English statesman, Conservative politician and poet who used the pseudonym Owen Meredith. During his tenure as Viceroy of India between 1876 and 1880, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. He served as British Ambassador to France from 1887 to 1891.
Alfred Guillaume Gabriel Grimod d'Orsay, comte d'Orsay was a French amateur artist, dandy, and man of fashion in the early- to mid-19th century.
Lady Charlotte Susan Maria Bury was an English novelist, who is chiefly remembered in connection with a Diary illustrative of the Times of George IV (1838).
Henry Colburn was a British publisher.
Disraeli, also called Disraeli: Portrait of a Romantic, is a 1978 four-part British serial about the great statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Benjamin Disraeli. It was produced by Associated Television and aired on ITV.
The Newgate novels were novels published in England from the late 1820s until the 1840s that glamorised the lives of the criminals they portrayed. Most drew their inspiration from the Newgate Calendar, a biography of famous criminals published during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and usually rearranged or embellished the original tale for melodramatic effect. The novels caused great controversy, and drew criticism in particular from the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, who satirised them in several of his novels and attacked the authors openly.
Rosina Bulwer-Lytton, Baroness Lytton, was an Anglo-Irish writer who published fourteen novels, a volume of essays, and a volume of letters.
Edith Bulwer-Lytton, Countess of Lytton, was a British aristocrat. As the wife of Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton, she was vicereine of India. After his death, she was a court-attendant of Queen Victoria. Her children included suffragette Constance Bulwer-Lytton.
The Exclusives is an 1830 novel by the British writer Lady Charlotte Bury, originally published in three volumes. It is part of the then-popular genre of silver fork novels set in high society. It was also published in New York City by Harper the same year in two rather than three volumes. Although the daughter of a duke herself Bury, writing anonymously, used it as an expose of the manners and behaviour of the elite Ton.
The Disowned is a novel by the British writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originally published in three volumes. It is part of the then-popular genre of silver fork novels, focusing on British high society of the late Regency era. Like many other silver fork novels it was published by Henry Colburn, with the first volume coming out in 1828 and the latter two in 1829. It is set in the late eighteenth century but the political and social themes it refers to have more relevance to the contemporary 1820s.
Devereux is an 1829 historical novel by the British writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published in three volumes. It takes place during the reign of Queen Anne and partly revolves around a secret Jacobite plot to place the pretender James Stuart on the throne. He earned £1,500 for the novel from his publisher Henry Colburn, trebling his earnings from the successful silver fork novel Pelham of the previous year. He dedicated it to his friend the Canadian traveller and writer John Auldjo, then living in Naples. The story of a sibling rivalry between three brothers may have been influenced by Bulwer-Lytton's own upbringing.
Pelham is an 1828 novel by the British writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originally published in three volumes. It was his breakthrough novel, launching him as one of Britain's leading authors. It is part of the tradition of silver fork novels that enjoyed great popularity in the late Regency and early Victorian eras. It follows the adventures of Henry Pelham, a young dandy, in Paris, London and the fashionable spa town of Cheltenham.
Falkland is an 1827 Gothic novella by the British writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It was his first published novel and took inspiration from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. The protagonist was likely partly based on Bulwer-Lytton himself. The novel enjoyed success in Germany, but was criticised in Britain as immoral. It was followed by Pelham in 1828, in which he switched to the fashionable silver fork genre, which established him as leading writing in Britain and Europe.
Matilda is an 1825 novel by the British writer and politician Lord Normanby, originally published in two volumes. It was part of the emerging, popular genre of silver fork novels which focused on the fashionable British upper classes in the later Regency era, and was his first published work. He followed it with a second silver fork novel, the political Yes and No in 1828.
The Contrast is an 1832 novel by the British writer and politician Lord Normanby, originally published in three volumes. It was his third novel following Matilda (1825) and Yes and No (1828), all three of which were part of the developing silver fork genre focused on the fashionable aristocracy and upper classes of the late Regency period. It was written at the time of the Reform Act and examines the mixing of relationships across classes.
The Tuileries is an 1831 novel by the British writer Catherine Gore. A bestselling writer of silver fork novels, Gore turned in this to the recent history of Paris following the French Revolution and particularly the Tuileries Palace. Gore herself had a low opinion of the work and when her publisher Richard Bentley asked her to write a review of it she declined, observing it was "a very dull work" and that she "could find little to say its favour" concluding that "the public must be more dense than I dare hope, if they can be persuaded that it is really a work of interest". It was one of two novels that Mary Shelley sent for in May 1831 along with Benjamin Disraeli's The Young Duke.
Women as They Are is an 1830 novel by the British writer Catherine Gore, originally published in three volumes.It is part of the silver fork novels focusing on fashionable high society of the later Regency era. It is also known by its subtitle The Manners of the Day. It was her first novel published by Henry Colburn, and was a considerable success. George IV described it as "the best bred and most amusing novel in my remembrance.