ABSTRACT
Although Harry Richmond is a work that may be easily read and absorbed at a superficial level, it can have a bewildering effect, since it does not follow any clearly recognized formal lines. A stream of characters and incidents are introduced, dropped and occasionally reintroduced in the arbitrary tradition of the picaresque. The novel combines this element with a heterogeneous assortment of fiction genres - the fairy tale, Ruritanian romance, confessional autobiography and Goethean Bildungsroman which may well disconcert the reader's expectations. It cannot sensibly be read outside these traditions.
