In article <360943a4.17842976 at 192.168.2.34>, dhansen at btree.com says...
> On 23 Sep 1998 17:36:17 GMT, peter at baileynm.com (Peter da Silva)
> wrote:
> >It's hard to point to any particular literary figure as being really critical.
> >Shakespeare was a man of his times, and he didn't introduce a new artform so
> >much as develop it. How about Daniel Defoe, who wrote the first modern novel
> >(even if it was based roughly on real events, Selkirk and Crusoe were not at
> >all similar...).
> I thought Miguel de Cervantes earned that honor for "Don Quixote"
And in English, the novel format was first written by Thomas Hardy.
-- Larry