An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times

Thomas Hill Green weighs fiction's contribution to a reader's understanding of life through a comparison of epic, tragedy and the modern novel. He treats art as a means of giving experience a larger shape, then argues that novels rely heavily on outward events, social circumstances and the pursuit of personal happiness. His discussion of Lear and Hamlet contrasts the inward force of tragic characters with the more ordinary conditions that govern people in prose fiction.

The contents move from principles of art to the novel's limitations and its useful functions, including widening experience, expanding sympathy and shaping public sentiment. This edition includes Fred Newton Scott's preface, a biographical introduction and an appendix with an appreciation of the essay and Hegel on the novel. Readers studying literary criticism will find a sustained philosophical argument about how narrative form influences moral thought and the standards used to judge imaginative writing.