Novella

A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word novella derives from the Italian novella meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) facts.

The Italian term is a feminine of novello, which means new, similarly to the English word news.^[1] Merriam-Webster defines a novella as "a work of fiction intermediate in length and complexity between a short story and a novel".^[1] There is disagreement regarding the number of pages or words necessary for a story to be considered a novella, a short story or a novel.^[2] The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association defines a novella's word count to be between 17,500 and 40,000 words;^[3][4] at 250 words per page, this equates to 70 to 160 pages. See below for definitions used by other organisations.

The novella as a literary genre began developing in the Italian literature of the early Renaissance, principally by Giovanni Boccaccio, author of The Decameron (1353).^[5] The Decameron featured 100 tales (named novellas) told by ten people (seven women and three men) fleeing the Black Death, by escaping from Florence to the Fiesole hills in 1348. This structure was then imitated by subsequent authors, notably the French queen Marguerite de Navarre, whose Heptaméron (1559) included 72 original French tales and was modeled after the structure of The Decameron.

The Italian genre novella grew out of a rich tradition of medieval short narrative forms. It took its first major form in the anonymous late 13th century Libro di novelle et di bel parlar gentile, known as Il Novellino, and reached its culmination with The Decameron. Followers of Boccaccio such as Giovanni Fiorentino, Franco Sacchetti, Giovanni Sercambi and Simone de' Prodenzani continued the tradition into the early 15th century. The Italian novella influenced many later writers, including Shakespeare.^[6]

Novellas were also written in Spain. Miguel de Cervantes' book Novelas ejemplares (1613) added innovation to the genre with more attention to the depiction of human character and social background.^[7]

Not until the late 18th and early 19th centuries did writers fashion the novella into a literary genre structured by precepts and rules, generally in a realistic mode. At that time, the Germans were the most active writers of the novelle (German: "Novelle"; plural: "Novellen").^[7] For the German writer, a novella is a fictional narrative of indeterminate length—a few pages to hundreds—restricted to a single, suspenseful event, situation, or conflict leading to an unexpected turning point (Wendepunkt), provoking a logical but surprising end. Novellen tend to contain a concrete symbol, which is the narrative's focal point.^{[citation needed]}

The novella influenced the development of the short story and the novel throughout Europe.^[8] In the late 19th century Henry James was one of the first English language critics to use the term novella for a story that was longer and more complex than a short story, but shorter than a novel.^[7]

In English speaking countries the modern novella is rarely defined as a distinct literary genre, but is often used as a term for a short novel.^[9]

A novella generally features fewer conflicts than a novel, yet more complex conflicts than a short story. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. Novellas may or may not be divided into chapters (good examples of those with chapters are Animal Farm by George Orwell and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells), and white space is often used to divide the sections, something less common in short stories. Novellas may be intended to be read at a single sitting, like short stories, and thus produce a unitary effect on the reader.^[10] According to Warren Cariou, "The novella is generally not as formally experimental as the long story and the novel can be, and it usually lacks the subplots, the multiple points of view, and the generic adaptability that are common in the novel. It is most often concerned with personal and emotional development rather than with the larger social sphere. The novella generally retains something of the unity of impression that is a hallmark of the short story, but it also contains more highly developed characterization and more luxuriant description.^[11]

This list contains those novellas that are widely considered to be the best examples of the genre, through their appearance on multiple best-of lists.^{[30][31][32][33][34][35]}

Some literary awards include a "best novella" award and sometimes a separate "best novelette" award, separately from "best short story" or "best novel". The distinction between these categories may be entirely by word count.

• Chain novel
• Conte (literature)
• Light novel
• List of novellas