That phrase is a big pet peeve of mine, for the same reasons you describe. Looking through Wikipedia's entries for Kurt Vonnegut's books, I see that Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) has "A new novel by" on the front cover, but his next book, 1973's "Breakfast of Champions", has the "A Novel" tag. So that's one data point. Another interesting curiosity is that on the first edition of Gogol's "Dead Souls", he insisted on putting "A Poem" on the front, which it most definitely is not.
"A Novel" has actually always been with us, as a subtitle or marketing tag, as long as the modern novel itself has been with us. Initially, in 17th and 18th century, this was during the period of transition when fiction became less fantastical and romance-like and more realistic, and so this tag was used to let readers know it was a work of fiction. Particularly with epistolary novels, readers needed to be told they weren’t reading real letters between real people. That said, consciously leaving it off a the cover or title page of a novel in those early days could be used to as a marketing ploy: the original version of "Robinson Crusoe" was presented as if a true story, and initially sold on that basis, written by Crusoe himself (rather than it’s real author Daniel Defoe writing a work of fiction), whereas the book it was partly based on, an actual true story of a castaway, written by Alexander Selkirk, was originally accused as being a work of fiction, because his experiences were considered so fantastical. But this subtitle, “A Novel”, has come in and out of vogue since and used for different reasons. There was, for example, in mid- to late-20th century a period when novels had very un-novel like titles, closer in style to non-fiction books, such as "A Confederate General from Big Sur" (first edition tagged as ‘A Novel by Richard Brautigan’). And more recently, when brick and mortar bookshops started competing with online bookshops, and the internet generally, when the physical context of all novels being shelved together became more open and fluid, there was a need in publishing to ensure that whenever somebody encountered a new book ‘out of context’, so to speak, they were given a frame of reference with which to approach it. That all said, I agree with Anne that it has become more an empty affectation than a useful framing device.
Honestly while I like the 'boys come first' cover, viewed digitally with 0 context I would have assumed it was a *graphic* novel. I'm not sure if graphic novels say "A graphic novel" on them, but I think they don't. In fact, I think a lot of comics people just use "comic" universally.
We have genre areas in the store and we get our books in boxes sorted by areas of the store. So books we filed under "Novel" arrive in that area. It's weird, because by that logic, should every comic say "a comic"? Like on Batman? Or is that "A Novel" just an assurance that no supernatural things shall be happening? Should SFF books say "there are space ships in this"?
I read somewhere that certain databases autofill "a novel" into works of fiction in the subtitle field if it's left blank. No idea if that's true or not.
I don't know, I just grabbed my hardback of The World According to Garp and it says A Novel in big red letters. And that was, what, 79? Also, all the Gore Vidal hardback novels on my shelf have A Novel on the cover somewhere.
That phrase is a big pet peeve of mine, for the same reasons you describe. Looking through Wikipedia's entries for Kurt Vonnegut's books, I see that Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) has "A new novel by" on the front cover, but his next book, 1973's "Breakfast of Champions", has the "A Novel" tag. So that's one data point. Another interesting curiosity is that on the first edition of Gogol's "Dead Souls", he insisted on putting "A Poem" on the front, which it most definitely is not.
I think there was a significant modern uptick in "A Novel" on books in the wake of the Million Little Pieces debacle.
"A Novel" has actually always been with us, as a subtitle or marketing tag, as long as the modern novel itself has been with us. Initially, in 17th and 18th century, this was during the period of transition when fiction became less fantastical and romance-like and more realistic, and so this tag was used to let readers know it was a work of fiction. Particularly with epistolary novels, readers needed to be told they weren’t reading real letters between real people. That said, consciously leaving it off a the cover or title page of a novel in those early days could be used to as a marketing ploy: the original version of "Robinson Crusoe" was presented as if a true story, and initially sold on that basis, written by Crusoe himself (rather than it’s real author Daniel Defoe writing a work of fiction), whereas the book it was partly based on, an actual true story of a castaway, written by Alexander Selkirk, was originally accused as being a work of fiction, because his experiences were considered so fantastical. But this subtitle, “A Novel”, has come in and out of vogue since and used for different reasons. There was, for example, in mid- to late-20th century a period when novels had very un-novel like titles, closer in style to non-fiction books, such as "A Confederate General from Big Sur" (first edition tagged as ‘A Novel by Richard Brautigan’). And more recently, when brick and mortar bookshops started competing with online bookshops, and the internet generally, when the physical context of all novels being shelved together became more open and fluid, there was a need in publishing to ensure that whenever somebody encountered a new book ‘out of context’, so to speak, they were given a frame of reference with which to approach it. That all said, I agree with Anne that it has become more an empty affectation than a useful framing device.
But when books came unbound, "cover" has a different meaning. I think of those more as metadata (I wrote about that in a previous newsletter) https://notesfromasmallpress.substack.com/p/short-titles-are-the-new-cliffhangers -- titles had to do a lot of work. Metadata before its time!
Honestly while I like the 'boys come first' cover, viewed digitally with 0 context I would have assumed it was a *graphic* novel. I'm not sure if graphic novels say "A graphic novel" on them, but I think they don't. In fact, I think a lot of comics people just use "comic" universally.
We have genre areas in the store and we get our books in boxes sorted by areas of the store. So books we filed under "Novel" arrive in that area. It's weird, because by that logic, should every comic say "a comic"? Like on Batman? Or is that "A Novel" just an assurance that no supernatural things shall be happening? Should SFF books say "there are space ships in this"?
I don't have a strong opinion about "A Novel" but I wanted to add that poetry books also often self-identify, as in "Good Bones: Poems"
I read somewhere that certain databases autofill "a novel" into works of fiction in the subtitle field if it's left blank. No idea if that's true or not.
I don't know, I just grabbed my hardback of The World According to Garp and it says A Novel in big red letters. And that was, what, 79? Also, all the Gore Vidal hardback novels on my shelf have A Novel on the cover somewhere.