[Ads-l] early nonfiction "novel"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Maybe this was simple carelessness, but I doubt it:

1861_Daily National Intelligencer_ (July 15) 2 [Newspapers.com] : WAR
NOVELS.--A large assortment of English War Novels, by Grant, Maxwell,
Gleig, Macfarlane, and other authors,” all in “Cheap editions, for Camp
reading.”

It isn’t easy to identify these names,but I've tracked down two, and
neither was a novelist.

Historian Charles Macfarlane's _Great Battles of the British Army_ was
advertised in British papers in 1853 and was revised and frequently
reprinted.

The Rev. G. R. Gleig's _Sale's Brigade in Afghanistan : with an Account of
the Seizure and Defence of Jellalabad_ appeared in 1846.

The 1861 ad in the _Intelligencer_ also contains the earliest ex. I've seen
of the phrase "war novel."

JL

On Sat, Jan 13, 2024 at 12:11 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 1952 News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) (Feb. 17) IV 5: "Serenade to the
> Big Bird," by Bert Stiles, is a splendid personal account of life in the
> Air Corps.... [T]his novel [is] probably the best of its kind to come out
> of World War II.
>
> The book in question is straight autobiography - as the reviewer seems to
> have realized.
>
> JL
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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