Fashionable novels, also called silver fork novels, were a 19th-centurygenre of English literature that depicted the lives of the upper class. They dominated the English literature market from the mid-1820s to the mid-1840s.[1] They were often indiscreet, and on occasion "keys" would circulate that identified the real people on which the principal characters were based.[1]Theodore Hook was a major writer of fashionable novels, and Henry Colburn was a major publisher.[1]
