Although the modern novel represents nearly all of what is read and considered literature in the present sense, the novelists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were lambasted by critics who considered them immoral hacks profiting from the base tastes of women and the middle class. The early pioneers of the novel are now seen in a more positive light, however. At their finest, the British novels of the Romantic period were sophisticated examinations of characters and social mores undergoing a profound change as society moved toward the modern era.

33 entries include: Jane Austen, Lady Charlotte Bury, John Galt, John Gibson Lockhart, Mary Russell Mitford, Thomas Love Peacock, Jane Porter, Walter Scott, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Horatio (Horace) Smith, Edward John Trelawny.