COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: 1908.

POSTSCRIPT: It is a good sign for the future of the novel that in the
ten years which have elapsed since this introduction was written, the
professors of literature in our colleges and in our graduate schools
have been paying increased attention to the study of prose fiction.
They had, first of all, to inform themselves more abundantly as to its
past history, and as to the relation it has borne to the epic on the
one hand and to the drama on the other. Then, secondly, they have been
encouraged to pass on to the students they were guiding the results of
their researches and of their reflections. And as a result the
significance of the novel is day by day made more manifest.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: 1918.

A MANUAL OF THE ART OF FICTION

CHAPTER I

THE PURPOSE OF FICTION

Fiction a Means of Telling Truth--Fact and Fiction--Truth and
Fact--The Search for Truth--The Necessary Triple Process--Different
Degrees of Emphasis--The Art of Fiction and the Craft of
Chemistry--Fiction and Reality--Fiction and History--Fiction and
Biography--Biography, History, and Fiction--Fiction Which Is
True--Fiction Which Is False--Casual Sins against the Truth in
Fiction--More Serious Sins against the Truth--The Futility of the
Adventitious--The Independence of Created Characters--Fiction More
True Than a Casual Report of Fact--The Exception and the
Law--Truthfulness the only Title to Immortality--Morality and
Immorality in Fiction--The Faculty of Wisdom--Wisdom and
Technic--General and Particular Experience--Extensive and
Intensive Experience--The Experiencing Nature--Curiosity and
Sympathy.

=Fiction a Means of Telling Truth.=--Before we set out upon a study of
the materials and methods of fiction, we must be certain that we
appreciate the purpose of the art and understand its relation to the
other arts and sciences. _The purpose of fiction is to embody certain
truths of human life in a series of imagined facts._ The importance of
this purpose is scarcely ever appreciated by the casual careless
reader of the novels of a season. Although it is commonly believed
that such a reader overestimates the weight of works of fiction, the
opposite is true--he underestimates it. Every novelist of genuine
importance seeks not merely to dive