Indeed, I know of no rarer or more valuable qualification than that describing common objects and relating familiar occurrences in such a manner as to render them pleasing and instructing, but when this talent is acquired, materials on which it may usefully and properly be exercised can never be deficient. I cannot conceive that the character of any man is unworthy to be known, and believe that there is no person, the incidents of whose life if skillfully related, would not furnish as much entertainment by their variety, and novelty as any fictitious narrative that ever was written. The true Romance is a more serious business than this. It is not merely a conjurer's trick-box full of flimsy quackeries, tinsel and claptraps, meant only to amuse, and relying upon deception to do even that. Romance, I take it, is the kind of fiction that takes cognizance of the variations from the type of normal life.
Realism is the kind of fiction that confines itself to the type of normal life.
According to this definition, the, Romance may even treat of the sordid, the unlovely - as, for instance, the novels of M. Zola. The reason why one claims so much for Romance, and quarrels so pointedly with Realism, is that Realism stultifies itself. It notes only the surface of things. A Research and Reference Guide .