[Ads-l] Fiction novel, 1930

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Tue Nov 18 05:24:35 UTC 2014


Great article discussing the shifting semantics of "novel", Neal.
Thanks for mentioning my name and providing a link to the Quote
Investigator website.

Several months ago I was in a library where I could have checked the
1931 citation, but I did not know that it might come on handy. My list
of tasks concerned the exploration/verification of quotations.

Garson


On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 9:32 PM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Subject:      Fiction novel, 1930
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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