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"Lives of the Novelists - A History of Fiction" - No RAH 
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Post "Lives of the Novelists - A History of Fiction" - No RAH
This looks like a very interesting book--



(blurb)
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; their writings illustrate every kind of fiction from gothic, penny dreadfuls and pornography to fantasy, romance and high literature. The book shows the changing forms of the genre, and how the aspirations of authors to divert and sometimes to educate their readers, has in some respects, radically changed over the centuries, and in others - such as their interest in sex and relationships - remained remarkably constant.

--but of 294 authors, RAH not included.
Does include E. R. Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John Dickson Carr, Dashiell Hammett, Leslie Charteris, Harold Robbins, Arthur C. Clarke, Jaqueline Susann, Fred Pohl, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Brian Aldiss, Maragret Atwood and Vernor Vinge.

So "genre" fiction and SF are pretty well represented. Obviously choices have to be made but I would argue RAH had more impact on "the novel" as such than, say Asimov. I am interested in reading it but I'll get it at the library and deny the author any of my $ for leaving out RAH. :|

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Fri Nov 25, 2011 4:55 pm
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Post Re: "Lives of the Novelists - A History of Fiction" - No RAH
It looks to be a typical literary look at things, not necessarily bound to any content or individual schools of literary development. Whatever else he did, I don't think Heinlein made any particular contribution to the literary-qua-literary arts. A very straightforward journeyman writer.

I'd say Clarke and Asimov were even less so, but they are far bigger mainstream names, so there you go.

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Sat Nov 26, 2011 8:03 am
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Post Re: "Lives of the Novelists - A History of Fiction" - No RAH
Maybe it will be like in the Star Trek film with the whales--in 300 years Harold Robbins and Jaqueline Susann will the giants of the era? :lol:

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Wed Dec 28, 2011 10:05 am
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Post Re: "Lives of the Novelists - A History of Fiction" - No RAH


Wed Dec 28, 2011 6:25 pm
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