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 Big Four (novel) the groundbreaking "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" (1926) and was overshadowed by its predecessor. In 1926 Christie was already deeply affected by the death of her mother earlier in the year and the breakdown of her marriage to Archibald Christie. Her brother-in-law, Campbell Christie, suggested compiling the "Sketch" stories into one novel, rather than undergo the strain of composing a completely new novel, and helped her revise them into a more coherent form for book publication. His assistance mainly took the form of revising the beginnings and ends of the stories to make them flow better into a novel –