In this substantial essay on the novel (first published in 1964) Barbara Hardy distinguishes three integral aspects of the art of fiction - story the working-out of a moral problem and truthfulness defined as the lively representation of reality. From this standpoint she discusses and elucidates some characteristic excellences and limitations of a number of major novels and novelists including Defoe Charlotte Brontë George Eliot Meredith James Hardy E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence.