Ian Watt

Who was Ian Watt?

Ian Watt was a literary critic, literary historian and professor of English at Stanford University. His Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding is an important work in the history of the genre. Although published in 1957, The Rise of the Novel is still considered by many contemporary literary scholars as the seminal work on the origins of the novel, and an important study of literary realism. The book traces the rise of the modern novel to philosophical, economic and social trends and conditions that become prominent in the early 18th century.