"One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name"
About this Quote
The syntax does its own rhetorical work. By piling qualifiers (“in Western European literature at any rate”) he signals methodological caution, but also draws a boundary around the canon he’s about to interrogate. The punch is aimed at Classics: Greek and Latin, the prestige engines of European education, don’t offer much of what moderns comfortably label “the novel.” That “comparative absence” is less a neutral observation than a destabilizer. If the foundational languages don’t produce the form we treat as literature’s mature achievement, then the novel can’t be justified as inevitable or inherently superior; it’s contingent, a product of later institutions, reading habits, and markets.
Saintsbury’s subtext is also about classification. “What we call by that name” quietly questions whether the category “prose fiction” is an anachronistic net cast backward, catching the wrong fish (romance, satire, biography, epic-in-prose) and missing the social function those texts actually served. The intent isn’t to mourn an absence; it’s to force a rethink of origins myths - and to remind modern readers that literary history is often a story we tell to legitimize our present tastes.
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Saintsbury, George. (2026, January 17). One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-best-known-and-one-of-the-least-61485/
Chicago Style
Saintsbury, George. "One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-best-known-and-one-of-the-least-61485/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-best-known-and-one-of-the-least-61485/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
