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The Novels Portal
WikiProject Novels aims to define a standard of consistency for articles about novels and literary genres associated with fictional narratives. It also aims to encourage and provide the structure for enhancing the writing of high quality articles on all manner of different novels. For the purpose of this project, "Novels" are deemed to include all works of narrative fiction that exhibit novel-like structure, regardless of length and genre. (This includes full novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories.) It also aims to encourage and promote the writing of articles on all types of such Novels.
Selected article
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the United States, so much so in the latter case that the novel intensified the sectional conflict leading to the American Civil War.
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist, focused the novel on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering Black slave around whom the stories of other characters—both fellow slaves and slave owners—revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the cruel reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century (and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible) and is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States alone. The book's impact was so great that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the American Civil War, Lincoln is often quoted as having declared, "So this is the little lady who made this big war."
The book, and even more the plays it inspired, also helped create a number of stereotypes about Blacks, many of which endure to this day. These include the affectionate, dark-skinned mammy; the Pickaninny stereotype of black children; and the Uncle Tom, or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the negative associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a "vital antislavery tool."
Selected novel quote
- ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Wendy Moira Angela Darling,’ she replied with some satisfaction. ‘What is your name?’
‘Peter Pan.’
She was already sure that he must be Peter, but it did seem a comparatively short name.
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes,’ he said rather sharply. He felt for the first time that it was a shortish name.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Wendy Moira Angela.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Peter gulped.
She asked where he lived.
‘Second to the right,’ said Peter, ‘and then straight on till morning.’
‘What a funny address!’
Peter had a sinking feeling. For the first time he felt that perhaps it was a funny address.
“A moment after the fairy’s entrance the window was blow open by the breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in.”
Did you know?
- ... that the science fiction novel The Masks of Time by Robert Silverberg, which featured a naked time traveler from the future, was a nominee for the 1969 Nebula Award?
- ... that in the fictional 1977 novel The Sword of Shannara, Shea Ohmsford is the only descendant of Jerle Shannara left in the Four Lands, and therefore the only one left who can use the Sword of Shannara?
- ... that Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated 1910–13 Antarctic expedition was the inspiration for two of Doris Lessing's novels, The Sirian Experiments and The Making of the Representative for Planet 8?
- ... that Jack Womack's 2000 alternate history novel Going, Going, Gone is set in two converging parallel versions of New York?
- ... that the Lord Peter Wimsey novel Thrones, Dominations was started by Dorothy L. Sayers in 1936 and completed by Jill Paton Walsh over 60 years later?
- ... that David Drake wrote his first novel, The Dragon Lord, after another author declined to develop the plot Drake had written?
- ... that the Beth Groundwater novel A Real Basket Case was nominated for the Best First Novel Agatha Award in 2007?
Categories
Announcements and open tasks
WikiProject Novels • (inc. novellas, novelettes & short stories)
Announcements and open tasks→ Please help with tagging articles!
- Critique (Featured article): 33 achieved
- Novels WikiProject Peer reviews: • Sector General • Petals of Blood • Flowers for Algernon
- Improve: The Age of Reason • Furies of Calderon • Wolf Brother • The Monk • The English Patient • Bones of the Moon
- Create: Oberon Past and Present • To the Vanishing Point • Spoilt City ...
- Recently a new worklist had been created and quietly arrived, the Cleanup listing which gives a fairly comprehensive hit list of "novels" related articles that have been tagged for something or other.
- Since then a new Article alerts listing has also been added of more topic and "urgent" items worthy of our attention.
Things to do
Category Backlog Unassessed novel articles 276 Novel articles needing attention 74 Automatically assessed novel articles 2,043 Novel articles without infoboxes 6,119 Novel has incomplete Book infobox 1,778 Novel has infobox needing cover 2,175 Novel has infobox needing 1st edition cover 365 Unknown-importance novel articles 3,127 Peer review 2 Articles that are all plot summaries 2,974 Wikimedia
Categories:- Novels portal
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