Robert Mayer argues that the modern English novel emerged from historical writing. Historical discourse in the seventeenth century embraced not only history in its modern sense, but also fiction, polemic, gossip, and marvels. Mayer shows how the narratives of Daniel Defoe--unlike those of his contemporaries Aphra Behn and Delarivi?re Manley--were read, in their own time, as history, making connections that later novelists developed. This new study...