novel of manners

novel of manners, work of fiction that re-creates a social world, conveying with finely detailed observation the customs, values, and mores of a highly developed and complex society. The conventions of the society dominate the story, and its characters are differentiated by the degree to which they measure up to the uniform standard, or ideal, of behavior or fall below it. Famous examples of the genre include English author Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and American novelist Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (1920).

Evelina and development of the genre

A landmark in the development of the novel of manners was Evelina; or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World, published anonymously in 1778 by English author Frances Burney. The daughter of musician and historian Charles Burney, she began her literary career writing letters and keeping a journal, in which she crafted lively accounts of the musical evenings at the Burneys’ London home; the family’s guests included such figures as actor and dramatist David Garrick, critic, biographer, and essayist Samuel Johnson, and playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Burney put her powers of observation to good use in Evelina, which concerns the development of an indifferently reared young girl who is unsure of herself and subject to errors of manners and judgment. Eventually, she overcomes her deficiencies and manages to marry. Burney’s novel was well-received and pointed the way for the novels of Austen and others.

The range of a novel of manners may be limited, as in the works of Jane Austen, which deal with the domestic affairs of English country gentry families of the 19th century and ignore elemental human passions and larger social and political determinations. It may also be sweeping, as in the novels of French author Honoré de Balzac, which mirror the 19th century in all its complexity in stories dealing with Parisian life, provincial life, private life, public life, and military life.

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List of novels of manners

Notable writers of the novel of manners from the end of the 19th century into the 20th include Henry James, Evelyn Waugh, Edith Wharton, and John Marquand. Among the best-known examples of the genre are the following.

• Evelina (1778) by Frances Burney
• Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Northanger Abbey (1817) by Jane Austen
• Eugénie Grandet (1833) and Le Père Goriot (1835) by Honoré de Balzac (both from La Comédie humaine [The Human Comedy])
• Vanity Fair (1848) by William Makepeace Thackeray
• Memórias de um sargento de milícias (1854–55; Memoirs of a Militia Sergeant) by Manuel Antônio de Almeida
• Middlemarch (1871–72) by George Eliot
• The Portrait of a Lady (1881) by Henry James
• The House of Mirth (1905) and The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton
• The Unbearable Bassington (1912) by Saki
• There Is Confusion (1924) by Jessie Redmon Fauset
• A Handful of Dust (1934) by Evelyn Waugh
• The Late George Apley (1937), Wickford Point (1939), and H.M. Pulham, Esquire (1941) by John Marquand