[Ads-l] Fiction novel, 1930

Neal Whitman nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET
Tue Nov 18 02:32:00 UTC 2014


The subject of "(non)fiction novel" has come up here several times. In 
this Visual Thesaurus column 
(http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/novel-gazing/, by subscription), I 
link to Garson's possible 1931 attestation of "nonfiction novel" in 
Google Books (announced elsewhere on this list), and also put in my 
earliest finding of "fiction novel". As I wrote in the column:

The earliest attestation I've found for /fiction novel/ is from 1930, 
within a year of O'Toole's possible early sighting of /nonfiction 
novel/. It's from an article by Albert Richard Wetjen 
(http://books.google.com/books?id=DQ0-AQAAIAAJ&q=%22fiction+novel%22), 
telling how he came to write his (nonfiction?) novel /Way for a Sailor,/ 
published in 1928:

    And here I had been trying to write a /fiction novel/ when I had so
    much actual fact at my fingertips.


Neal




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