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The novel originated in the early 18th century and has evolved to focus more so on character development than plot. The novel became increasingly more popular at the end of the 1700's as direct result of the development of the middle class. With the growing middle class, people had more free time to spend on leisurely activities such as reading books. Widespread interest in relatable characters led to the popularity of memoirs, autobiographies, biographies, journals, and diaries as people's interests shifted more toward the human experience.

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Early English novels mainly focused on the daily lives of middle-class characters struggling with morality. Samuel Richardson's "Pamela," written in 1741, is considered the first official English novel. Other early novelists of this period include Daniel Defoe and Jane Austen.

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The novel became established as the dominant literary form during the reign of Queen Victoria of England (1837-1901). Victorian novelists portrayed middle-class, virtuous heroes responding to society and learning wrong from right through a series of human errors. Sir Walter Scott published three-volume novels and ingeniously made them affordable to the general public by making them available for purchase in monthly installments. This marketing tactic lead to the writing innovation of sub-climaxes as a way to leave readers wanting more each month.

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19th Century industrialization impacted the progression to more realistic writings. Novels began to reject the prevalent idealism/romanticism of previous genres and focus in on the human experience and characters that were morally compromised. Realism quickly transformed into naturalism, which focused on downbeat characters dealing with heavier circumstances and being heavily subject to their environments. Some famous examples of naturalist novels include "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Tom Sawyer" (1876) and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1885).

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Shifting cultural ideals and beliefs following World War II led to a change in literary trends from Modernism to Postmodernism. While postmodernism often rests on an affect of an inability to be defined, the world wide devastation, increase in alienation, and a feeling of loss of humanity gives us a literary trend that maintains themes of absurdity, surrealism, and a lack of meaning in our world. Authors like Kurt Vonnegut are emblematic of this, and ideologies such as existentialism characterize it.