Fashionable novels, also called silver fork novels, were a 19th-century

19th century in literature

See also: 19th century in poetry, 18th century in literature, other events of the 19th century, 20th century in literature, list of years in literature....

 genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

 of English literature

English literature

English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

 that depicted the lives of the upper class

Upper class

In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...

. They dominated the English literature market from the mid-1820s to the mid-1840s. They were often indiscreet, and on occasion "keys

Roman à clef

Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...

" would circulate that identified the real people on which the principal characters were based. Their emphasis on the relations of the sexes and on marital relationships presaged later development in the novel.

Theodore Hook was a major writer of fashionable novels, and Henry Colburn

Henry Colburn

Henry Colburn , British publisher, obtained his earliest experience of book-selling in London at the establishment of W...

 was a major publisher. Colburn particularly advertised them as providing insight into aristocratic life. Catherine Gore

Catherine Gore

Catherine Grace Frances Gore was a British novelist and dramatist, daughter of a wine merchant at Retford, where she was born. She is amongst the well-known of the silver fork writers - authors of the Victorian era depicting the gentility and etiquette of high society.-Biography:Gore was born in...

 was another very popular writer.

William Hazlitt coined the term "silver fork" in an article on “The Dandy School” in 1827. He characterized them as having "under-bred tone" because while they purported to tell the lives of aristocrats, they were commonly written by the middle-class. Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle

Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...

 wrote Sartor Resartus in critique of their minute detailing of clothing, and William Makepeace Thackery satirized them in Vanity Fair and Pendennis

Pendennis

Pendennis is a novel by the English author William Makepeace Thackeray. It is set in 19th century England, particularly in London. The main hero is a young English gentleman Arthur Pendennis who is born in the country and sets out for London to seek his place in life and society...

.

As more women wrote the genre, it became increasingly moralized.

Further reading

• Cronin, Richard. Romantic Victorians: English Literature, 1824-1840. Macmillan (2002), chapter 4. ISBN 0333966163.
• The Silver Fork Novel at Victorian Web
  Victorian Web
  The Victorian Web is an online resource of information about the Victorian Era created at Brown University and at the University Scholars Program of the National University of Singapore....