PLOT
In this illuminating new history of both an art and an industry, Philip Hensher describes how the evolutionary scramble by writers and publishers to get attention drove constant innovation in writing techniques, and produced new ways of printing, distributing, and selling books. Over the course of three hundred years, these creative and commercial forces shaped the novel’s form and its future, from Daniel Defoe to Zadie Smith. Reading widely across the famous, the once famous and the utterly (if unfairly) forgotten, this is a work of investigative verve that makes a serious case for widening the canon. But it is also a gift: Hensher has read untold thousands of books, and A History of the Novel in Britain is his hoard of treasure, waiting to be discovered, wondered at and delighted in.