English novel John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678) and Aphra Behn's "Oroonoko" (1688) are also contenders, while earlier works such as Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur", and even the "Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" have been suggested. Another important early novel is "Gulliver's Travels" (1726, amended 1735), by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, which is both a satire of human nature, as well as a parody of travellers' tales like "Robinson Crusoe". The rise of the novel as an important literary genre is generally associated with the growth of the middle class in England. Other major 18th-century English novelists are
The World Is the Home of Love and Death The World Is the Home of Love and Death The World Is the Home of Love and Death: Stories is a collection of short stories written by Harold Brodkey and first published posthumously in 1997. Most of the stories were written to be part of his novel "The Runaway Soul" and concern its characters. Four of the eleven stories ("The Bullies", "Spring Fugue", "What I Do for Money", and "Dumbness is Everything") were originally printed in "The New Yorker" and one ("Religion") in "Glimmer Train", from 1986 to 1996. The "Runaway Soul" stories are from the perspective of that novel's