ABSTRACT
This change marked a literary response to the growing awareness of varied regional, social, and industrial lifestyles. New reading audiences came from new sociolinguistic communities. The provincial or working-class hero and heroine in the novel of social realism epitomize this change. A complementary factor was the example of national dialects in Scottish and Irish literature. Scotland had a long-established written tradition, but the enormous popularity of Walter Scott and the general acceptance of writers such as John Gait (1779-1839) and Susan Ferrier (17821854) consolidated the practice. Among Irish novelists Samuel Lover (1797-1868) and Charles Lever (1806-1872) were widely popular. Both literatures used native speakers as characters to create a sympathetic awareness of national life and national problems, although also taking advantage of the comic tradition by fusing it with more serious elements.
