Fashionable novels, also called
silver fork novels, were a
19th-century genre of
English literature that depicted the lives of the
upper class. They dominated the English literature market from the mid-1820s to the mid-1840s. They were often indiscreet, and on occasion "keys" would circulate that identified the real people on which the principal characters were based.
Theodore Hook was a major writer of fashionable novels, and
Henry Colburn was a major publisher.
References
Further reading
- Cronin, Richard. Romantic Victorians: English Literature, 1824-1840. Macmillan (2002), chapter 4. ISBN 0333966163.