Romance novel

“ Sometimes, after reading some very noble or beautiful poem, some very striking and powerful novel, she had, it is true, wondered a little if life was ever to contain any romance for her, and had thought that such a romance would be pleasant. ”

“ That this was the precise formula in which the British decision was shaped, we do not pretend to say. All novel-readers know that when the hero of the tale plunges into the stream, and rescues the drowning maiden from the torrent, he straightway falls in love with her and marries her. If she happens to be blind, or half-witted, or hump-backed, it only adds to the charm of the romance. ”

“ But a race may surely find springing up in itself a fresh love of romance, in the high sense of that word, which can keep it active, hopeful, ardent, progressive. Perhaps the novel is to be, in the next decades, part of the outward manifestation of a new birth of this love of breadth and happiness. ”

“ This convenient division of prose fiction into romances and novels is open to challenge. Some critics use the name "novel" for any work of prose fiction. They divide novels into two classes, stories (or short stories) and romances. The story relates simple or detached incidents; the romance deals with life in complex relations, dominated by strong emotions, especially by the emotion of love. ”

“ We may broadly differentiate the romance from the modern novel by saying that the romance deals primarily with incident and adventure for their own sake, while the novel concerns itself with these only in so far as they are necessary for a faithful picture of life or for showing the development of character. ”

“ The tone of the romance is monotonous, and we dare not affirm that this song, receiving the honors of written notation, could satisfy the dilettante and the melodrama. But its charm, or, if you will, its enchanting grace, consists in the modulations of the voice in singing, as it were to cast out certain notes, to blend them, to balance them, so to say, very softly, in raising or lowering the tone, in swelling it or allowing it to die. It is thus that the romance, composed of a number of notes strongly bound, presents the great difficulties of expression, and the purity of execution. ”

“ And it has another and a wider claim—that it keeps up, in its own way, the element of the imaginative, of the fanciful—let us say even of the unreal—without which romance cannot live, without which novel is almost repulsive, and which the increasing advances of realism itself were to render more than ever indispensable. ”

“ Meredith. You have started the "Imitation"—the "fiction"—and tout est là. The ancients could do this in the dramatic way admirably, though on few patterns; in the poetical way as admirably, but again not on many. The Middle Ages lost the dramatic way almost entirely, but they actually improved the poetical on its narrative side, and the result was Romance. In every romance there is the germ of a novel and more; there is at least the suggestion and possibility of romance in every novel that deserves the name. ”

“ And if the reasoning is feeble, and if the subsidiary assumptions are too numerous or too facile, we say the work is flimsy or improbable—allowing for the genre; for a romance is not expected to be as probable as a modern novel. ”

“ It is not possible in a paper of this length to inquire into the foundations of sentimentality and romance. Practically, however, what we call a romantic life is one full of romantic incidents which come unsought, as the natural consequence and result of a man’s or a woman’s character. It is therefore necessarily an exceptional life, and as such should have exceptional interest for the majority. ”

“ If any one considers that this proposition is at variance with the other, that the main function of the novel during the period has been to bring the novel closer to ordinary life, he has failed to grasp what it might be presumptuous plumply to call the true meaning of Romance, but what is certainly that meaning as it has always appeared to me. ”

“ Yet these very things, properly managed, help to create and complicate the "novel" character. For one of the most commonly and not the least justly charged faults of the average romance is its deficiency in combined plot and character-interest—the presence in it, at most, of a not too well-jointed series of episodes, possibly leading to a death or a marriage, but of little more than chronicle type. This fault has been exaggerated, but it exists. ”

“ Out of an already half-forgotten realm of romance, where, often now, he found it increasingly difficult to realise that he had lived for five happy years, a young girl had suddenly emerged as bodily witness, to corroborate, revive, and refresh his fading faith in the reality of what once had been. ”

“ By BRAM STOKER
“One of the most enthralling and unique romances ever written.”—The Christian World.
“The very weirdest of weird tales.”—Punch.
“Its fascination is so great that it is impossible to lay it aside.”—The Lady.
“It holds us enthralled.”—The Literary World.
“The idea is so novel that one gasps, as it were, at its originality. A romance far above the ordinary production.”—St. Paul’s. ”

“ This original and dramatic story presents fresh types, extraordinary situations, and novel suggestions with a freshness and vigor which show that the romancer's heart was in his work. How far certain incidents of the story are based upon personal experiences it is impossible to say, but the unflagging interest and unexpected phases of the romance are no less in evidence than the close personal relations established between author and reader. ”

“ The New York Times says: "The novel is imbued throughout with a poet's love of nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment place it in the category of heart romances."
The Way of a Man By EMERSON HOUGH Illustrated, cloth, decorative. Price, $1.50.
A great, strong, masterful romance of American life in the early sixties. Love, romance and adventure are paramount in this wonderful story.
The Chicago Record-Herald says: "A story that grips the reader's attention, whets his appetite, and leaves him ever eager for more." ”

“ Or even of the fountain of wit; for with respect to the sore temptation of novel reading, it is not the badness of a novel that we should dread, so much as its over-wrought interest. The weakest romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, and the worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, false philosophy, or false political essays. ”

“ There is an old-fashioned distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident which must have cost many a smile to the intending fabulist who was keen about his work. It appears to me as little to the point as the equally celebrated distinction between the novel and the romance—to answer as little to any reality. There are bad novels and good novels, as there are bad pictures and good pictures; but that is the only distinction in which I see any meaning, and I can as little imagine speaking of a novel of character as I can imagine speaking of a picture of character. ”

“ Those who sing well appear to sing by intuition. When towards evening, in the country, one hears at a distance a fine voice singing the romance with a melancholy full of originality, he feels an extraordinary emotion, which can only be compared to that produced in Germany by the sounds of the postilion’s cornet, so deliciously repeated by the echoes in the magnificent forests, and on the splendid lakes. The words of the romance refer generally to some history of the Moors, or recount either pious legends or the sad exploits of brigands. ”

“ It is true that the old romances abound with hints and germs only needing development, but development was slow in coming, and even when about the beginning of the eighteenth century romance and novelette had grown into the novel, it was still long before the novel became a vehicle of ideas and a potent factor in civilisation. ”

“ Reality pressed hard upon them, crushing their romance into crime, their passion to the vulgarity of an everyday intrigue. This secret backstairs meeting seemed to stamp all that passed at it with its own degrading sign; their high-wrought defiance of the world and the right dwindled before their eyes to a mean and sly evasiveness. So felt Willie Ruston; and Maggie Dennison sat silent while he painted for her what he felt. ”

“ The perfect novel must be clean and sweet, for it must tell its tale to all mankind, to saint and sinner, pure and defiled, just and unjust. It must have the magic to fascinate and the power to hold its reader from first to last. Its realism must be real, of three dimensions, not flat and photographic; its romance must be of the human heart and truly human, that is, of the earth as we all have found it; its idealism must be transcendent, not measured to man’s mind, but proportioned to man’s soul. ”

“ She goes through the most pathetic domestic experiences, tempered by all the fires of affliction she is old enough to be scorched by. Perhaps such narratives are little nearer to reality as regards the moods and conduct of the young girls of the time than are the dime novels as regards the actual adventures of their brothers, but they must have voiced contemporary aspirations and must have shown in action what was desired by the majority of parents and by many girls themselves. The decade was fighting romance with romance, the romance of blood with the romance of tears. ”

“ And this definition is as rigid at least as the Aristotelian definition of tragedy and perhaps more exhaustive, as concerns the novel, including, with the necessary modifications, the romance—and the romance, including, with the necessary modifications, the novel. In it "general ideas," unless a very special and not at all usual meaning is attached to the term, can have no right of place. ”

“ The novel, therefore, is an intellectual artistic luxury—a definition which can be made to include a good deal, but which is, in reality, a closer one than it appears to be at first sight. No one, I think, will deny that it covers the three principal essentials of the novel as it should be, of a story or romance, which in itself and in the manner of telling it shall appeal to the intellect, shall satisfy the requirements of art, and shall be a luxury, in that it can be of no use to a man when he is at work, but may conduce to peace of mind and delectation during his hours of idleness. ”

“ She gazed with enthusiasm upon its magnificent monuments, and her memory was filled with the traditional tales and ballads of Moorish chivalry. Indeed, the solitary life she had led, and the visionary turn of her father’s mind, had produced an effect upon her character, and given it a tinge of what, in modern days, would be termed romance. All this was called into full force by this new passage; for, when a woman first begins to love, life is all romance to her. ”

“ It is therefore in science and statesmanship that the romantic quality of the future will be found. Romance is a maligned word, debased to fit any calf-love; romance is pinkish, or bluish, tender, feeble, and ends in orange blossom, or, as the case may be, tears by the side of mother's grave. That is the romance of the provincial touring company. True romance is virile, generous, and its voice is as that of the trumpet. Romance is the wage of the watcher, who with ever-open eyes scans the boundless air in eternal expectation that a thing unknown will appear. ”

“ But the day comes sooner or later to the married pair, when the prose pages must be turned, and poetry relegated to the background, days on which the reality of life, in all its grim nakedness, seems to banish romance, and when love needs all its strength and staying power for the fight. ”

“ A man buys what purports to be a work of fiction, a romance, a novel, a story of adventure, pays his money, takes his book home, prepares to enjoy it at his ease, and discovers that he has paid a dollar for somebody’s views on socialism, religion, or the divorce laws. ”

“ I plead guilty myself to a most passionate love of romance—that is, romance which teaches, elevates, and ennobles—the soul of poetry, the high and noble faculty that teaches one to appreciate the beautiful and true. ”

“ The city and the crowd unidealise love; and love, in the young warm heart of a girl, should be a dream apart from all commoner emotions—as sweet and as ethereal as the blush with which it is born and dies. Beauty gives its own gracefulness to love—there must be romance blended with the passion inspired by the very lovely face which the mirror reflected. ”

“ What are the indescribable effects that romance, casting far beyond problems of character and conduct, seeks to realise? What is the nature of the great informing, underlying idea that animates a truly great romance—The Bride of Lammermoor, Monte Cristo, Les Misérables, The Scarlet Letter, The Master of Ballantrae? ”

“ True love suffers, and is silent. I remember myself once—But it is no matter now. Romance is a thing of the past.”
“Nonsense!” said the Roman Candle, “Romance never dies. It is like the moon, and lives for ever. The bride and bridegroom, for instance, love each other very dearly. I heard all about them this morning from a brown-paper cartridge, who happened to be staying in the same drawer as myself, and knew the latest Court news.”
But the Catherine Wheel shook her head. “Romance is dead, Romance is dead, Romance is dead,” she murmured. ”

“ Oh, those burning moments in love, when romance has just mellowed into passion, and without losing anything of its luxurious vagueness mingles the enthusiasm of its dreams with the ardent desires of reality and earth! ”