In this substantial essay on the novel (first published in 1964) Barbara Hardy distinguishes three integral aspects of the art of fiction - story, the working-out of a moral problem, and "truthfulness", defined as "the lively representation of reality". From this standpoint she discusses and elucidates some characteristic excellences and limitations of a number of major novels and novelists, including Defoe, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Meredith, James, Hardy, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence.
