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.[1] They were often indiscreet, and on occasion "keys" would circulate that identified the real people on which the principal characters were based.[1] Their emphasis on the relations of the sexes and on marital relationships presaged later development in the novel.[2]
Theodore Hook was a major writer of fashionable novels, and Henry Colburn was a major publisher.[1] Colburn particularly advertised them as providing insight into aristocratic life.[3] Catherine Gore was another very popular writer.[4]
William Hazlitt coined the term "silver fork" in an article on “The Dandy School” in 1827.[3] 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.[3] Thomas Carlyle wrote Sartor Resartus in critique of their minute detailing of clothing, and William Makepeace Thackeray satirized them in Vanity Fair and Pendennis.[3]
As more women wrote the genre, it became increasingly moralized.[2]