A History of the Novel in Britain by Philip Hensher review – a masterpiece of criticism

This joyous book takes readers on a literary adventure across 200 years of fiction, from Defoe to Zadie Smith In his opening paragraph, Philip Hensher declares that a novel not only “tells a good story” but is a good story in itself. We could extend that neat formula to include this book, which is not only a masterful account of fiction since 1719, when Daniel Defoe set Robinson Crusoe down on his desert island, but is itself a wonderful read. There is nothing dreary here; no sense of being ...

By Kathryn Hughes