Beginnings

The first part looks at how the novel came into being. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe changed the literary landscape in 1719 for ever. Writers soon realised the power of the novel to infiltrate the human mind. Less than a century later, Jane Austen took literature to new heights of sophistication . This documentary also considers Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. Richardson’s novel ‘Clarissa’ took the novel into the internal world of the characters, whereas Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’ was more action and plot based. Jane Austen followed by combining the two approaches in her novels.