Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world's first novel, because of its early use of the experience of intimacy in a narrative form. There is considerable debate over this, however, as there were certainly long fictional prose works that preceded it. The spread of printed books in China led to the appearance of classical Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain.[15] Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era.[16] Literary historian Ian Watt, in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century.
Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books, web novels, and ebooks. Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels. While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in the 19th century, they have only become popular recently.
^"Novel", A Glossary of Literary Terms (9th Edition), M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Gall Harpham, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston, 2009, p. 226.
^Britannica Online Encyclopedia[1] accessed 2 August 2009
^Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
^J. A. Cuddon, Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory, ed., 4th edition, revised C. E. Preston. London: Penguin, 1999, pp. 76o-2.
^Melville described Moby Dick to his English publisher as "a romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries," and promised it would be done by the fall. Herman Melville in Horth, Lynn, ed. (1993). Correspondence. The Writings of Herman Melville. Vol. Fourteen. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library. ISBN0-8101-0995-6.
^William Harmon & C, Hugh Holmam, A Handbook to Literature (7th edition), p. 237.
^M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (7th edition), p. 192.
^"Essay on Romance", Prose Works volume vi, p. 129, quoted in "Introduction" to Walter Scott's Quentin Durward, ed. Susan Maning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. xxv.