In their own time they were most often called “histories,” these fictional narratives of present time that chronicled the daily experiences, conflicts, and thoughts of ordinary men and women. They went by other names, too - “romances,” “adventures,” “lives,” “tales,” “memoirs,” “expeditions,” “fortunes and misfortunes,” and (ultimately) “novels” - because a variety of features and traditions competed for attention in this new hybrid form that in the course of the eighteenth century came to dominate the reading habits of English men and women of all classes. When the term “novel” finally stuck, near the end of the century after several decades in which novels had been the most popular books in England, it represented both the power of a “new” literary form to dominate the reading public and the cultural acceptance of narratives about contemporary life and times.