Nature, not art, makes us all story-tellers. Daily and nightly we devise fictions and chronicles, calling some of them daydreams or dreams, some of them nightmares, some of them truths, records, reports and plans. The object of this book is to look at these natural narrative forms and themes, which have been neglected by critics but recognized by narrative artists, using literary criticism in order to argue the limits and limitations of literature. Although Hardy's suggestions about narrative apply broadly to all artistic forms, in the second part of the book she approaches the subject through a detailed analysis of three authors, Dickens, Hardy and Joyce, all profound and far-reaching analysts of narrative structures and values.