“A worthy successor to Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. John Sutherland is witty, incisive, idiosyncratic, and has the keenest of eyes for the telling detail. While recounting the stories of so many fascinating authors, Lives of the Novelists also offers a memorable portrait of a critical life devoted to reading and writing.”
— James Shapiro Professor of English Columbia University on The Lives of the Novelists
The Lives of the Novelists
by John Sutherland
This is the most complete history of fiction in English ever published. The world’s greatest authority - arguably the only person who could have written it, John Sutherland - provides the lives of some 294 novelists writing in English, from the genre’s seventeenth-century origins to the present day. Arranged in chronological order the novelist’s lives are opinionated, informative, frequently funny and often shocking. Professor Sutherland’s authors come from all over the world