This book examines four novels and contemporary views about novels which can contribute to a fuller understanding of the great English novels of the 1840s. The novels chosen for this study are of the 1840s as well as for all time. English novels of the 1840s are particularly interesting because it was during this period that the novel was in the process of becoming the dominant form and it was during this same period that critics began to say what they continued to say more forcibly for the next forty years or so.