The statement: " The novel followed the drama as a major form in England" is true.
The novel followed the drama as the major art form in England. Drama was the dominant literary art of the 1500s and 1600s, and the novel flourished in the 1700s.
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, normally written in prose form, and which is typically published as a book.
The genre originated in classical Greece and Rome, in medieval and early modern romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella. (Since the 18th century, the term "novella", or "novelle" in German, has been used in English and other European languages to describe a long short story or a short novel.)
