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100-725: Bachelors Anonymous is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse , first published in the United Kingdom on 15 October 1973 (Wodehouse's 92nd birthday) by Barrie & Jenkins , London and in the United States on 28 August 1974 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. , New York. In the novel, movie mogul Ivor Llewellyn, who has divorced five times, is interested to learn from his lawyer Ephraim Trout about a support group for bachelors who help keep each other from making impulsive marriage proposals. Ivor Llewellyn previously appeared in The Luck of

200-408: A certain time—after the world suspects that two people are engaged to each other, it is scarcely possible for the woman to recede: when they come within a certain distance, they are pressed to unite, by the irresistible force of external circumstances. A woman is too often reduced to this dilemma: either she must marry a man she does not love, or she must be blamed by the world—either she must sacrifice

300-400: A conditional gift, given in the expectation of the marriage taking place. If an engagement gift was given on a holiday, such as Valentine's Day or Christmas , the gift could be considered to be non-contingent, and given partially for reasons other than marriage, and thus does not have to be returned. Christmas presents are generally taken to be absolute gifts, and thus cannot be recovered if

400-423: A daughter became pregnant by a man who then refused to marry her), since they led to wide publicity being given to a scrutiny of personal concerns, something which was strongly repugnant to the family feeling of the period (especially where young women were concerned). Trial by Jury is an 1875 curtain-raiser and comic opera that enacts a satirical trial for breach of promise. The successful musical launched

500-413: A firm assurance of future marriage. During the early 20th century, social standards changed so that a woman who had pre-marital sex was no longer considered to be "ruined". During that time, half of American women lost their virginity during their marriage engagements. Compensation was based on emotional distress and the woman's reduced opportunity for a future marriage. Damages were greatly increased if

600-411: A form of entertainment. However, one of the earliest English novels, Daniel Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe (1719), has elements of the romance, unlike these novels, because of its exotic setting and story of survival in isolation. Crusoe lacks almost all of the elements found in these new novels: wit, a fast narration evolving around a group of young fashionable urban heroes, along with their intrigues,

700-464: A hero and his life. The adventures led to satirical encounters with the real world with the hero either becoming the pitiable victim or the rogue who exploited the vices of those he met. A second tradition of satirical romances can be traced back to Heinrich Wittenwiler 's Ring ( c.  1410 ) and to François Rabelais ' Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), which parodied and satirized heroic romances, and did this mostly by dragging them into

800-467: A man if she had his promise to marry her. If he seduced her and subsequently refused marriage, her lack of virginity would make her future search for a suitable husband more difficult or even impossible. However, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the main factors were compensation for the denial of the woman's expectations of becoming "established" in a household (supported by her husband's wealth) and possible damage to her social reputation, since there were

900-433: A man is discussed in a passage from the 1801 novel Belinda by Maria Edgeworth , where an older woman is urging Miss Belinda Portman to give a suitor more time to attach her affections, though Belinda is worried that even by just passively accepting his attentions for a certain time, she might find herself "entangled, so as not to be able to retract", even "if it should not be in my power to love him at last": ... after

1000-399: A married person could sue the person with whom his or her spouse had engaged in adultery. Alienation of affections was another similar tort against a third party who encouraged the adultery, or who was otherwise responsible for the breakdown of the marriage. France nominally did not permit breach of promise actions, holding that marriage must involve free consent from both parties, and if

1100-411: A member of Bachelors Anonymous when he returns to California with a letter of introduction from Trout. The illustration on the first UK edition dust jacket of Amelia Bingham bandaging Ephraim Trout's hand was drawn by Osbert Lancaster . The back of the dust jacket features a photograph of Wodehouse looking out a window, taken by Tom Blau, Camera Press . The same illustration and photograph were used for

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1200-573: A nostalgia for the old romances with their heroism and professed virtue. Jane Barker explicitly advertised her Exilius as "A new Romance", "written after the Manner of Telemachus", in 1715. Robinson Crusoe spoke of his own story as a "romance", though in the preface to the third volume, published in 1720, Defoe attacks all who said "that [...] the Story is feign'd, that the Names are borrow'd, and that it

1300-431: A number of ways that the reputation of a young never-married woman of the genteel classes could be damaged by a broken engagement, or an apparent period of intimacy which did not end in a publicly announced engagement, even if few people seriously thought that she had lost her virginity. She might be viewed as having broken the code of maidenly modesty of the period by imprudently offering up her affections without having had

1400-449: A philosophical and a theological novel, respectively. The tradition of works of fiction that were also philosophical texts continued with Thomas More 's Utopia (1516) and Tommaso Campanella 's City of the Sun (1602). However, the actual tradition of the philosophical novel came into being in the 1740s with new editions of More's work under the title Utopia: or the happy republic;

1500-639: A philosophical romance (1743). Voltaire wrote in this genre in Micromegas: a comic romance, which is a biting satire on philosophy, ignorance, and the self-conceit of mankind (1752, English 1753). His Zadig (1747) and Candide (1759) became central texts of the French Enlightenment and of the modern novel. An example of the experimental novel is Laurence Sterne 's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–1767), with its rejection of continuous narration. In it

1600-406: A point in a conversation, and the exemplum a priest would insert in a sermon belong into this tradition. Written collections of such stories circulated in a wide range of products from practical compilations of examples designed for the use of clerics to compilations of various stories such as Boccaccio 's Decameron (1354) and Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales (1386–1400). The Decameron

1700-667: A portion of her reputation, or the whole of her happiness. ... A young woman is not in this respect allowed sufficient time for freedom of deliberation. Breach-of-promise actions were part of the standard stock-in-trade of comic writers of the 19th century (such as Charles Dickens in Pickwick Papers , or Gilbert and Sullivan in Trial by Jury ) and in the 20th century as a frequent plot device by P. G. Wodehouse, but most middle- and upper-class families were reluctant to use them except in rather extreme circumstances (such as when

1800-568: A pseudo- bucolic form, and the celebrated L'Astrée , (1610) of Honore d'Urfe (1568–1625), which is the earliest French novel, is properly styled a pastoral . Although its action was, in the main, languid and sentimental, there was a side of the Astree which encouraged that extravagant love of glory, that spirit of " panache", which was now rising to its height in France. That spirit it was which animated Marin le Roy de Gomberville (1603–1674), who

1900-465: A rising literacy rate among the growing population of townspeople, as well as the development of lending libraries. Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) might be said to have given birth to the modern consciousness of the novel in Japan, mixing vernacular dialogue into his humorous and cautionary tales of the pleasure quarters, the so-called Ukiyozōshi (" floating world ") genre. Ihara 's Life of an Amorous Man

2000-517: A scandalous moral, gallant talk to be imitated, and a brief, concise plot. The new developments did, however, lead to Eliza Haywood 's epic length novel, Love in Excess (1719/20) and to Samuel Richardson 's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1741). Some literary historians date the beginning of the English novel with Richardson's Pamela , rather than Crusoe. The idea of the "rise of the novel" in

2100-489: A separate key. The Mercure Gallant set the fashion in the 1670s. Collections of letters and memoirs appeared, and were filled with the intriguing new subject matter and the epistolary novel grew from this and led to the first full blown example of scandalous fiction in Aphra Behn 's Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684/ 1685/ 1687). Before the rise of the literary novel, reading novels had only been

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2200-672: A single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages. They were often illustrated with crude woodcuts , which sometimes bore no relation to the text. When illustrations were included in chapbooks, they were considered popular prints . The tradition arose in the 16th century, as soon as printed books became affordable, and rose to its height during the 17th and 18th centuries. Many different kinds of ephemera and popular or folk literature were published as chapbooks, such as almanacs , children's literature , folk tales , nursery rhymes , pamphlets , poetry , and political and religious tracts . The term "chapbook" for this type of literature

2300-503: Is Simplicius Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen , published in 1668, Late 17th-century critics looked back on the history of prose fiction, proud of the generic shift that had taken place, leading towards the modern novel/novella. The first perfect works in French were those of Scarron and Madame de La Fayette 's "Spanish history" Zayde (1670). The development finally led to her Princesse de Clèves (1678),

2400-706: Is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of courtly love . Originally, romance literature was written in Old French , Anglo-Norman and Occitan , later, in English , Italian and German . During the early 13th century, romances were increasingly written as prose. The shift from verse to prose dates from the early 13th century; for example, the Romance of Flamenca . The Prose Lancelot or Vulgate Cycle also includes passages from that period. This collection indirectly led to Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur of

2500-473: Is a type of narrative in prose or verse popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe . They were marvel-filled adventures , often of a knight-errant with heroic qualities, who undertakes a quest , yet it is "the emphasis on heterosexual love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic , which involve heroism." In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there

2600-548: Is all a Romance; that there never were any such Man or Place". The late 18th century brought an answer with the Romantic Movement's readiness to reclaim the word romance, with the gothic romance , and the historical novels of Walter Scott . Robinson Crusoe now became a "novel" in this period, that is a work of the new realistic fiction created in the 18th century. Sentimental novels relied on emotional responses, and feature scenes of distress and tenderness, and

2700-511: Is bitten by a dog named Percy, and the dog's owner, Amelia Bingham, bandages his hand. She is a hospital nurse. Trout falls for her, and now approves of marriage. Llewellyn is astonished when Trout accepts dinner with Vera on Llewellyn's behalf. Joe suggests that Llewellyn get a check-up at a hospital to hide from Vera. Trout, who has resigned from Bachelors Anonymous, admits to slipping Joe a Mickey Finn and apologizes to him. Trout tells Sally everything, and she reconciles with Joe. Unaware that Jaklyn

2800-582: Is considered by some to be one of the earliest "romances" or "novels" of China, and it was influential on later works of fiction in East Asia. Urbanization and the spread of printed books in Song dynasty (960–1279) led China to the evolution of oral storytelling, chuanqi and huaben , into long-form multi-volume vernacular fictional novels by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The European developments of

2900-469: Is considered the first work in this genre. Although Ihara's works were not regarded as high literature at the time because it had been aimed towards and popularized by the chōnin (merchant classes), they became popular and were key to the development and spread of ukiyozōshi . A chapbook is an early type of popular literature printed in early modern Europe . Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered booklets, usually printed on

3000-535: Is disappointed when Joe fails to appear, believing it to be petty revenge for her missing lunch. Jaklyn proposes to her (for her money) and she accepts, not knowing he is engaged to Daphne. She mentions her engagement to Daphne, and Daphne realizes what occurred. With one of her operatives, the intimidating Cyril Pemberton, she makes Jaklyn join her at the registry office to get married. Sally refuses to listen to Joe and goes to Valley Fields to see her former nanny Jane Priestley, who turns Joe and Trout away. Trout's hand

3100-631: Is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era . Literary historian Ian Watt , in The Rise of the Novel (1957), argued that the modern novel was born in the early 18th century. Recent technological developments have led to many novels also being published in non-print media: this includes audio books , web novels , and ebooks . Another non-traditional fiction format can be found in graphic novels . While these comic book versions of works of fiction have their origins in

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3200-412: Is now married, Trout pays him off with fifty pounds to prevent a breach of promise case. Daphne catches Sally smoking, and Joe is fired by Llewellyn, who impulsively proposed to his nurse at the hospital, Amelia. However, all ends well when Llewellyn learns Trout has got engaged to Amelia. Llewellyn decides to make Joe's play into a movie and pays him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and will become

3300-497: Is on his way to London on business, and Trout sees Llewellyn off at the Los Angeles airport. Trout warns him against any more impulsive proposals. Trout has managed to stay single since he belongs to a California group called Bachelors Anonymous, inspired by Alcoholics Anonymous . When one member feels the impulse to take a woman out to dinner, he seeks out the other members and they reason with him. He advises Llewellyn to consult

3400-538: Is one of the states that still recognizes a breach of promise action: Campbell v Robinson , 398 S.C. 12, 726 S.E. 2d 221 (Ct. App. 2012). About one-half of U.S. states still permit such lawsuits, according to the National Paralegal College . Examples of such suits include a jury award of $ 150,000 in the 2008 Shell case in Georgia, and $ 130,000 in a North Carolina jury trial December 17, 2010, in

3500-483: The Roman à clef . Other works could, conversely, claim to be factual histories, yet earn the suspicion that they were wholly invented. A further differentiation was made between private and public history: Daniel Defoe 's Robinson Crusoe was, within this pattern, neither a "romance" nor a "novel". It smelled of romance, yet the preface stated that it should most certainly be read as a true private history. The rise of

3600-525: The Supreme Court of India ruled that sex on false promise of marriage constitutes rape . In Canada, the common law action has been abolished in some provinces by legislation. For example, in Saskatchewan , the action for breach of promise was formally abolished by legislation in 2010. The first known lawsuit for breach of promise in colonial America and the first in which the defendant

3700-425: The "belongs to the commoners", "trivial daily talks" aspect in one of his work. The earliest novels include classical Greek and Latin prose narratives from the first century BC to the second century AD, such as Chariton 's Callirhoe (mid 1st century), which is "arguably the earliest surviving Western novel", as well as Petronius ' Satyricon , Lucian 's True Story , Apuleius ' The Golden Ass , and

3800-410: The 16th and 17th centuries two factors led to the separation of history and fiction. The invention of printing immediately created a new market of comparatively cheap entertainment and knowledge in the form of chapbooks . The more elegant production of this genre by 17th- and 18th-century authors were belles lettres — that is, a market that would be neither low nor academic. The second major development

3900-401: The 18th century is especially associated with Ian Watt 's influential study The Rise of the Novel (1957). In Watt's conception, a rise in fictional realism during the 18th century came to distinguish the novel from earlier prose narratives. The rising status of the novel in eighteenth century can be seen in the development of philosophical and experimental novels . Philosophical fiction

4000-444: The 19th century, they have only become popular recently. A novel is a long, fictional narrative. The novel in the modern era usually makes use of a literary prose style . The development of the prose novel at this time was encouraged by innovations in printing , and the introduction of cheap paper in the 15th century. Several characteristics of a novel might include: East Asian countries, like China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan, use

4100-481: The 19th-century femmes fatales . Breach of promise Breach of promise is a common-law tort , abolished in many jurisdictions . It was also called breach of contract to marry , and the remedy awarded was known as heart balm . From at least the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, many jurisdictions regarded a man's promise of engagement to marry a woman as a legally binding contract . If

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4200-447: The 5th through 8th centuries. Vasavadatta by Subandhu , Daśakumāracarita and Avantisundarīkathā by Daṇḍin , and Kadambari by Banabhatta are among notable works. These narrative forms were influenced by much older classical Sanskrit plays and Indian classical drama literature, as well as by oral traditions and religious texts. The 7th-century Tang dynasty narrative prose work You Xian Ku written by Zhang Zhuo

4300-473: The Bachelors Anonymous idea to Joe, and recognizes him as the man who threw him out at the theatre and kept him from having dinner with Vera. Impressed, Llewellyn hires him. Sally apologizes to Joe for missing lunch and agrees to dinner. Trout sees Llewellyn, who is concerned that Joe has fallen for Sally. This worries Trout, and to keep Joe from going to dinner, he slips Joe a Mickey Finn . Sally

4400-625: The Bedroom ). Joe is interviewed by Sally Fitch (from Much Middlefold ) for a women's paper, and they get along well. Vera monopolizes the show and Cousin Angela closes after only 16 performances. The Regal Theatre's stage-doorkeeper Mac (who appeared in A Damsel in Distress and Summer Lightning ) gives his sympathy to Joe. While waiting to see Vera, a drunk man threatens Mac, so Joe throws him out. Joe learns from his friend Jerry Nichols, of

4500-667: The Bodkins (1935), Frozen Assets (1964), and Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin (1972). Another character, lawyer Jerry Nichols, appeared in Uneasy Money (1916). Bachelors Anonymous was the second last novel completed by Wodehouse, with the last being Aunts Aren't Gentlemen . Ephraim Trout of Trout, Wapshott and Edelstein, a legal firm employed by Ivor Llewellyn, head of the Superba-Llewellyn studio of Hollywood, has handled Llewellyn's five divorces. Llewellyn

4600-516: The Fatalist (1773, printed posthumously in 1796). A market of literature in the modern sense of the word, that is a separate market for fiction and poetry, did not exist until the late seventeenth century. All books were sold under the rubric of "History and politicks" in the early 18th century, including pamphlets , memoirs , travel literature , political analysis, serious histories, romances, poetry, and novels. That fictional histories shared

4700-590: The Nichols, Erridge and Trubshaw law firm, that he can earn a lucrative salary working for Llewellyn. Joe falls in love with Sally and makes plans to have lunch with her at Barribault's . Jerry tells Sally that she has inherited a legacy from a former employer, Letitia Carberry, supporter of the Anti-Tobacco League. Carberry left most of her money to the League but left Sally twenty-five thousand pounds on

4800-600: The Principles of Virtue and Religion in the Minds of the Youth of Both Sexes", which focuses on a potential victim, a heroine that has all the modern virtues and who is vulnerable because her low social status and her occupation as servant of a libertine who falls in love with her. She, however, ends in reforming her antagonist. Male heroes adopted the new sentimental character traits in the 1760s. Laurence Sterne 's Yorick ,

4900-451: The absolute physical or mental incapacity of the betrothed. In South Africa , engagements could be dissolved by mutual agreement. Impotence, sterility, criminality, and alcoholism also formed valid reasons to end an engagement. Additionally, the person refusing to marry was unable to sue for breach of promise. Some of the original theory behind this tort was based on the idea that a woman would be more likely to give up her virginity to

5000-620: The ancient definition of "small talks" merely refers to trivial affairs, trivial facts, and can be different from the Western concept of novel. According to Lu Xun , the word "small talks" first appeared in the works of Zhuang Zhou , which coined such word. Later scholars also provided a similar definition, such as Han dynasty historian Ban Gu , who categorized all the trivial stories and gossips collected by local government magistrates as "small talks". Hồ Nguyên Trừng classified his memoir collection Nam Ông mộng lục as "small talks" clearly with

5100-547: The anonymous Aesop Romance and Alexander Romance . These works were often influenced by oral traditions, such as storytelling and myth-making, and reflected the cultural, social, and political contexts of their time. Afterwards, their style was adapted in later Byzantine novels such as Hysimine and Hysimines by Eustathios Makrembolites Narrative forms were also developed in Classical Sanskrit in India during

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5200-517: The appearance of the vernacular classic Chinese novels during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and Qing dynasty (1616–1911). An early example from Europe was Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl in Muslim Spain . Later developments occurred after the invention of the printing press . Miguel de Cervantes , author of Don Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605),

5300-561: The author not only addresses readers in his preface but speaks directly to them in his fictional narrative. In addition to Sterne's narrative experiments, there are visual experiments, such as a marbled page, a black page to express sorrow, and a page of lines to show the plot lines of the book. The novel as a whole focuses on the problems of language, with constant regard to John Locke 's theories in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . The rise of

5400-599: The book "a most benign, autumnal novel, formulaic but much simpler in plot than Wodehouse in his long summer would have thought fair to his cash customers." Novel Murasaki Shikibu 's Tale of Genji , an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been described as the world's first novel, because of its early use of the experience of intimacy in a narrative form. There is considerable debate over this, however, as there were certainly long fictional prose works that preceded it. The spread of printed books in China led to

5500-476: The careers of librettist W.S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan . In the 1935 film We're in the Money , Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell play two process servers trying to serve a rich playboy, Ross Alexander , with a breach of promise suit. At the start of the 1946 film Easy to Wed , newspaperman Warren Haggerty ( Keenan Wynn ) has abandoned his planned wedding to Gladys Benson ( Lucille Ball ) for

5600-605: The case of Dellinger v. Barnes (No. 08 CVS 1006). Laws vary by state. In Illinois , for example, documented wedding expenses can be recovered, but damages for emotional distress are prohibited, and notice of an intent to sue must be provided within three months of the engagement being dissolved. Damages were generally permitted for expenses incurred on the expectation of a marriage, such as property transferred or wedding expenses. In some jurisdictions, emotional distress, loss of social standing, and loss of virginity were also possible sources of damages. Some countries also allowed

5700-462: The cities as traders. Cheap printed histories were, in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially popular among apprentices and younger urban readers of both sexes. The early modern market, from the 1530s and 1540s, divided into low chapbooks and high market expensive, fashionable, elegant belles lettres . The Amadis and Rabelais ' Gargantua and Pantagruel were important publications with respect to this divide. Both books specifically addressed

5800-707: The concept of novel as it is understood in the Western world was (and still is) termed as "long length small talk" (長篇小說), novella as "medium length small talk" (中篇小說), and short stories as "short length small talk" (短篇小說). However, in Vietnamese culture, the term 小說 exclusively refers to 長篇小說 (long-length small talk), i.e. standard novel, while different terms are used to refer to novella and short stories. Such terms originated from ancient Chinese classification of literature works into "small talks" (tales of daily life and trivial matters) and "great talks" ("sacred" classic works of great thinkers like Confucius ). In other words,

5900-525: The condition that she not smoke for two years. Sally is to live in a posh Park Lane apartment with a private detective, Daphne Dolby, the owner of the Eagle Eye detective agency, who will know if Sally smokes. Daphne is engaged to Sir Jaklyn Warner, Baronet, because she is interested in his title and he in her money. Jaklyn, who is Sally's ex-fiancé, hears about Sally's inheritance. Sally accidentally falls asleep and misses lunch with Joe. Llewellyn explains

6000-560: The couple had engaged in pre-marital sexual intercourse. In England and Wales until 1970 a woman whose fiancé broke off their engagement could sue him for breach of promise, whilst a woman was permitted to change her mind without penalty. The last prominent case was in 1969, when Eva Haraldsted sued George Best , a prominent footballer, for breach of promise. England and Wales undertook legal reforms in 1970 that generally made property disputes related to engagements to be handled like property disputes between married couples. On 1 January 1971

6100-559: The early 1470s. Prose became increasingly attractive because it enabled writers to associate popular stories with serious histories traditionally composed in prose, and could also be more easily translated. Popular literature also drew on themes of romance, but with ironic , satiric or burlesque intent. Romances reworked legends , fairy tales , and history, but by about 1600 they were out of fashion, and Miguel de Cervantes famously burlesqued them in Don Quixote (1605). Still,

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6200-409: The engagement dissolves, but engagement rings are generally taken to be conditional gifts, at least under most circumstances, which means that they must be returned if the recipient no longer chooses to go through with the marriage. Whether an engagement ring must be returned if the giver breaks off the engagement varies. Criminal conversation was a similar tort, arising from adultery , in which

6300-440: The engagement is legally binding, then free consent is not possible. However, any party may sue for losses as a result of improper behavior by an engaged person. In Scots law before 1812, damages were limited only to actual financial losses. After World War II, German, Spanish, and Italian law allowed for the recovery of actual damages incurred as a result of a failed engagement. The social damage from receiving attention from

6400-505: The film A Hard Day's Night (1964), Paul McCartney 's (fictional) grandfather is pursued by young women who want to sue him for breach of promise. In the 1998 series Berkeley Square , Captain Mason is forbidden from marrying Isobelle by her chaperone Aunt Effie due to his outstanding bills and social indiscretion. He threatens to sue for breach of promise, forcing Effie to accept their engagement to avoid family scandal. In season 8 of

6500-460: The first US edition for the front and back of the dust jacket respectively. The US edition of the book is dedicated: "To Peter Schwed, as always". Peter Schwed was Wodehouse's editor at Simon & Schuster . Wodehouse had also dedicated the US editions of Bertie Wooster Sees It Through , Author! Author! , and The Purloined Paperweight to Schwed. Wodehouse biographer Richard Usborne called

6600-475: The first novel with what would become characteristic French subject matter. Europe witnessed the generic shift in the titles of works in French published in Holland, which supplied the international market and English publishers exploited the novel/romance controversy in the 1670s and 1680s. Contemporary critics listed the advantages of the new genre: brevity, a lack of ambition to produce epic poetry in prose;

6700-584: The hero of the Sentimental Journey (1768) did so with an enormous amount of humour. Oliver Goldsmith 's Vicar of Wakefield (1766) and Henry Mackenzie 's Man of Feeling (1771) produced the far more serious role models. These works inspired a sub - and counterculture of pornographic novels, for which Greek and Latin authors in translations had provided elegant models from the last century. Pornography includes John Cleland 's Fanny Hill (1748), which offered an almost exact reversal of

6800-612: The heroes, it was always hinted that they were well-known public characters of the day in a romantic disguise. Stories of witty cheats were an integral part of the European novella with its tradition of fabliaux . Significant examples include Till Eulenspiegel (1510), Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), Grimmelshausen 's Simplicissimus Teutsch (1666–1668) and in England Richard Head 's The English Rogue (1665). The tradition that developed with these titles focused on

6900-613: The legal firm of Nichols, Erridge and Trubshaw in London, as they can find someone to act as a similar advisor for Llewellyn. Other members of Bachelors Anonymous convince Trout to follow Llewellyn to London to help. In London, Llewellyn meets Vera Dalrymple, the star of the Regal Theatre's stage comedy Cousin Angela , written by Joseph "Joe" Pickering (who makes his living working for the solicitors Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith, and Shoesmith, mentioned in other stories such as Ice in

7000-537: The low realm of the burlesque. Don Quixote modified the satire of romances: its hero lost contact with reality by reading too many romances in the Amadisian tradition. Other important works of the tradition are Paul Scarron 's Roman Comique (1651–57), the anonymous French Rozelli with its satire on Europe's religions, Alain-René Lesage 's Gil Blas (1715–1735), Henry Fielding 's Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749), and Denis Diderot 's Jacques

7100-411: The man subsequently changed his mind, he would be said to be in "breach" of this promise and could be subject to litigation for damages. The converse of that was seldom true. The concept that "it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind" had at least some basis in law (though a woman might pay a high social price for exercising this privilege). Unless a dowry of money or property had changed hands, or

7200-420: The meaning of "trivial facts" rather than the Western definition of novel. Such classification also left a strong legacy in several East Asian interpretations of the Western definition of “novel” at the time when Western literature was first introduced to East Asian countries. For example, Thanh Lãng and Nhất Linh classified the epic poems such as The Tale of Kiều as "novel", while Trần Chánh Chiếu emphasized

7300-417: The modern image of the medieval is more influenced by the romance than by any other medieval genre, and the word "medieval" evokes knights, distressed damsels, dragons, and such tropes. The term "novel" originates from the production of short stories, or novella that remained part of a European oral culture of storytelling into the late 19th century. Fairy tales, jokes, and humorous stories designed to make

7400-399: The modern novel as an alternative to the chivalric romance began with the publication of Miguel de Cervantes ' novel Don Quixote : "the first great novel of world literature". It continued with Scarron 's Roman Comique (the first part of which appeared in 1651), whose heroes noted the rivalry between French romances and the new Spanish genre. In Germany an early example of the novel

7500-501: The new customers of popular histories, rather than readers of belles lettres . The Amadis was a multi–volume fictional history of style, that aroused a debate about style and elegance as it became the first best-seller of popular fiction. On the other hand, Gargantua and Pantagruel , while it adopted the form of modern popular history, in fact satirized that genre's stylistic achievements. The division, between low and high literature, became especially visible with books that appeared on both

7600-401: The noted Chicago attorney Clarence Darrow to defend him against the charges, which were eventually dismissed. In the United States, most states repealed breach-of-promise laws or limited them, beginning in 1935. Partly as a result, expensive diamond engagement rings , previously uncommon, began to become commonplace, and formed a sort of financial security for the woman. South Carolina

7700-469: The novel did not occur until after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439, and the rise of the publishing industry over a century later. Long European works continued to be in poetry in the 16th century. The modern European novel is often said to have begun with Don Quixote in 1605. Another important early novel was the French pastoral novel L'Astrée by Honore d'Urfe , published in 1610. Romance or chivalric romance

7800-422: The nuptials are called off or for loss of employment, moving and living expenses incurred by one party as a result of an engagement, which is later broken. A breach of promise suit required a legally valid marriage engagement. Under Nevada law, this need not be in writing (as a prenuptial agreement is required to be), but may have been made orally by both parties. All that is required is that each have promised

7900-511: The other to marry the other at some future time (no date certain is required). Generally, promises made by—but not to—people who had not reached the age of majority could be broken at any time, without penalty, as could the promise made by a married person (e.g., conditional upon the death of the current spouse), so long as the other party knew that the person was married at the time. Similarly, an engagement between people who were not legally permitted to marry (e.g., because of consanguinity laws)

8000-453: The plot is arranged to advance emotions rather than action. The result is a valorization of "fine feeling", displaying the characters as models of refined, sensitive emotional affect. The ability to display such feelings was thought at this time to show character and experience, and to help shape positive social life and relationships. An example of this genre is Samuel Richardson 's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), composed "to cultivate

8100-467: The plot of novels that emphasise virtue. The prostitute Fanny Hill learns to enjoy her work and establishes herself as a free and economically independent individual, in editions one could only expect to buy under the counter. Less virtuous protagonists can also be found in satirical novels, like Richard Head 's English Rogue (1665), that feature brothels, while women authors like Aphra Behn had offered their heroines alternative careers as precursors of

8200-427: The popular and belles lettres markets in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries: low chapbooks included abridgments of books such as Don Quixote . The term "chapbook" is also in use for present-day publications, commonly short, inexpensive booklets. Heroic Romance is a genre of imaginative literature, which flourished in the 17th century, principally in France. The beginnings of modern fiction in France took

8300-562: The publication of histories that dared not risk an unambiguous assertion of their truth. The literary market-place of the late 17th and early 18th century employed a simple pattern of options whereby fictions could reach out into the sphere of true histories. This permitted its authors to claim they had published fiction, not truth, if they ever faced allegations of libel. Prefaces and title pages of seventeenth and early eighteenth century fiction acknowledged this pattern: histories could claim to be romances, but threaten to relate true events, as in

8400-479: The same space with academic histories and modern journalism had been criticized by historians since the end of the Middle Ages: fictions were "lies" and therefore hardly justifiable at all. The climate, however, changed in the 1670s. The romance format of the quasi–historical works of Madame d'Aulnoy , César Vichard de Saint-Réal , Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras , and Anne-Marguerite Petit du Noyer , allowed

8500-414: The style was fresh and plain; the focus was on modern life, and on heroes who were neither good nor bad. The novel's potential to become the medium of urban gossip and scandal fueled the rise of the novel/novella. Stories were offered as allegedly true recent histories, not for the sake of scandal but strictly for the moral lessons they gave. To prove this, fictionalized names were used with the true names in

8600-673: The tort was abolished in England and Wales by section 1 of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1970. In Hong Kong, similar to the situation in England and Wales, engagements to marry are not enforceable at law by legislation, damages for distress caused and reliance on the breach of promise are claimable, if the plaintiff suffers sufficiently serious consequences in light of the specific circumstances, for instance in Cheung Suk Man v So Shek Keung [1965] HKLR 485. In 2019,

8700-431: The umpteenth time when his paper is faced with a libel suit. When Benson storms in to confront him, she threatens him with a breach of promise suit, to which Haggerty replies "Breach of promise suits have been outlawed!" The episode "A Woman's Privilege" of the featurette series The Scales of Justice recounts the unusual case of a man who sues a woman for breach of promise following a cruise ship romance engagement. In

8800-430: The welfare of children or actual violence. Many of them have repealed all laws regarding such eventualities, and in others, the statute allowing such an action may technically remain on the books, but the action has become very rare and unlikely to be pursued with any probability of success. Arising in its stead are judicial opinions and/or statutes permitting a breach-of-contract action for wedding expenses incurred when

8900-498: The woman could be shown to have become engaged to a man only to enable her use of his money, a man could rarely recover in a "breach of promise" suit against a woman if he was even allowed to file one. Changing social attitudes toward morals have led to a decline in the number of legal actions in response to " jilting ". Most jurisdictions, at least in the English -speaking common-law world, have become increasingly reluctant to intervene in cases of personal relationships not involving

9000-426: The woman to sue for loss of future income, that is, for money that she would have had, if her very wealthy fiancé had not broken off the engagement. In 20th-century reforms, this was generally abolished over fears of gold digging . One challenge in settling disputes for breach of promise was determining whether a gift made during the engagement was an absolute gift—one given permanently, with no strings attached—or

9100-480: The word 小說 ( variant Traditional Chinese and Shinjitai : 小説 ; Simplified Chinese : 小说 ; Hangeul : 소설 ; Pinyin : xiǎoshuō ; Jyutping : siu syut ; Wugniu : siau-seq 7 ; Peh-oe-ji : sió-soat ; Hepburn : shōsetsu ; Revised : soseol ; Vietnamese : tiểu thuyết ), which literally means "small talks", to refer to works of fiction of whatever length. In Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures,

9200-496: The word "novel" at the cost of its rival, the romance, remained a Spanish and English phenomenon, and though readers all over Western Europe had welcomed the novel(la) or short history as an alternative in the second half of the 17th century, only the English and the Spanish had openly discredited the romance. But the change of taste was brief and Fénelon's Telemachus [ Les Aventures de Télémaque ] (1699/1700) already exploited

9300-572: Was a compilation of one hundred novelle told by ten people—seven women and three men—fleeing the Black Death by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills, in 1348. The modern distinction between history and fiction did not exist in the early sixteenth century and the grossest improbabilities pervade many historical accounts found in the early modern print market. William Caxton 's 1485 edition of Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur (1471)

9400-536: Was a woman was Cecily Jordan v. Greville Pooley . This case was tried in the chambers of the Virginia Company and never went to a civil court, as the plaintiff withdrew his complaint. The first successful case was Stretch v Parker in 1639. In 1915, Louis A. Merrilat , an American football end and military officer active in the early 20th century, was sued by Helen Van Ness for breach of promise after breaking off an engagement. Merrilat hired

9500-461: Was coined in the 19th century. The corresponding French and German terms are bibliothèque bleue (blue book) and Volksbuch , respectively. The principal historical subject matter of chapbooks was abridgements of ancient historians, popular medieval histories of knights, stories of comical heroes, religious legends, and collections of jests and fables. The new printed books reached the households of urban citizens and country merchants who visited

9600-613: Was invalid. Valid engagements could be broken without penalty by either party upon discovery of significant and material facts, such as previously unknown financial state (if completely concealed, rather than partially revealed; the Shell case in Georgia in 2008 permitted a jury award to the woman of $ 150,000 although the man breaking the engagement stated that he did so after paying $ 30,000 of her debts when he discovered she still owed more), bad character, fraud, too-close blood relations, or

9700-405: Was not exactly new. Plato 's dialogues were embedded in fictional narratives and his Republic is an early example of a Utopia . Ibn Tufail 's 12th century Philosophus Autodidacticus with its story of a human outcast surviving on an island, and the 13th century response by Ibn al-Nafis , Theologus Autodidactus are both didactic narrative works that can be thought of as early examples of

9800-469: Was sold as a true history, though the story unfolded in a series of magical incidents and historical improbabilities. Sir John Mandeville 's Voyages , written in the 14th century, but circulated in printed editions throughout the 18th century, was filled with natural wonders, which were accepted as fact, like the one-footed Ethiopians who use their extremity as an umbrella against the desert sun. Both works eventually came to be viewed as works of fiction. In

9900-512: Was the first best-seller of modern fiction, the Spanish Amadis de Gaula , by García Montalvo. However, it was not accepted as an example of belles lettres . The Amadis eventually became the archetypical romance, in contrast with the modern novel which began to be developed in the 17th century. Many different genres of literature made their debut during the Edo period in Japan, helped by

10000-468: Was the inventor of what have since been known as the Heroical Romances. In these there was experienced a violent recrudescence of the old medieval elements of romance, the impossible valour devoted to a pursuit of the impossible beauty, but the whole clothed in the language and feeling and atmosphere of the age in which the books were written. In order to give point to the chivalrous actions of

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