Examples of novels with framed narration?

Frankenstein remains my favorite book of all, and features an outstanding framing device. This is a good place to start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_story

George Moore's Albert Nobbs also employed a framing device. It took a little while for me to get used to, or it might have been the style -- just post-Victorian. I enjoyed the story a lot, but IMHO it didn't need it.

Wuthering Heights. I may be biased because I absolutely love the story itself, but I think the frame narrative was done well and it helped me as a reader step into the story smoothly. Lockwood was basically as clueless as a reader, and it felt nice to see things narrated from his perspective - the way he listened to the housekeeper's story, it felt like the reader getting familiarized with it. Lockwood had no knowledge of the actual story until he came to Wuthering Heights, and it's the same reaction/feeling that a reader would have when first starting the book. I think Lockwood's character in some ways acts as a bridge between the story and the reader.

I second Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein.

Absolutely love Lockewood, and also Nellie herself is sort of a frame, yet it all really works.

Sorry to be predictable and always bang on about the same book, but (ahem) Book of the New Sun has a very complex framing device where the Severian telling us the story isn't quite the same as the Severian whose story we are given since he's a time-travelling, history-altering berk. (In short, Severian the Lame is telling us the story of Severian the Torturer, because he went back in time to fix his own leg so he wasn't lame, among other things.)

Lord Jim and Victory and Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, as I recall.
The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

caw

Harlequin said:

(In short, Severian the Lame is telling us the story of Severian the Torturer, because he went back in time to fix his own leg so he wasn't lame, among other things.)

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I hadn't heard about this book but your description made me laugh out loud. It sounds like a pretty complex story. Still, hilarious

Too Like The Lightning is another. Mycroft pulls you out frequently for explanations.

I do as well in current wip. As often as needed.

How about Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita? The story of the crucifixion is described by Satan (Woland) in the "main" narrative and also the subject of the Master's ill-fated novel.

(and in answer to the OP's original question - one I love - a truly great book)

To add to the list, Dragonfly in Amber (the sequel to Outlander by Diana Gabaldon) is a frame story. So is The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, Wise Man's Fool).

The Lord of the Rings has a framing device that it's a scholarly translation of an existing book.

The Historian is the reading of a journal as the girl retraces the steps of the man who wrote it.

Maryn said:

And of course there's an old favorite, The Princess Bride. (It's framed in the movie adaptation, too.)

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That device almost ruined the book for me, because so much of it is William Goldman telling us how great the framed story is. He uses the conceit of a fictional author, S. Morgenstern, but since in fact Goldman wrote the story (the "best parts version"), that much self-praise is a little off-putting.

The first example I thought of was the Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure The Land That Time Forgot. The main story is a manuscript in a Thermos bottle, found in the ocean. The framing-story narrator, before presenting the text of the manuscript, assures us that "you will forget me in two pages", or something like that (which is true).

Stephen King's The Body (on which the movie Stand by Me is based). As everyone probably knows, it's a twelve-year-old's story framed through the eyes of an adult. It's also a good way to ensure agents (and readers) don't mistake your story for YA (because of the young protagonist).

Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King - story framed as a statement given to the police in a murder investigation

Manuel Royal said:

That device almost ruined the book for me, because so much of it is William Goldman telling us how great the framed story is. He uses the conceit of a fictional author, S. Morgenstern, but since in fact Goldman wrote the story (the "best parts version"), that much self-praise is a little off-putting.

The first example I thought of was the Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure The Land That Time Forgot. The main story is a manuscript in a Thermos bottle, found in the ocean. The framing-story narrator, before presenting the text of the manuscript, assures us that "you will forget me in two pages", or something like that (which is true).

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Agreed on TPB. He really overplayed his hand as a clever author... particularly in the anniversary edition I read, where he really twisted things by claiming "Morgenstern" was relating actual historical characters from his made-up countries, and got the family estate involved in stifling the "sequel." The movie did good to dial it back to just a grandfather reading the fairy tale to the kid, without the extra baggage.

Still a classic despite that, though.

IIRC, framing devices used to be very common in Burroughs's day; often it seemed to be a gathering of friends while one man told a story that was the novel/short, a framing device that really contributed little to the tale but was so common I don't think writers of the day questioned using it.

As for ones that haven't been mentioned... as someone mentioned upthread, I've been known to forget all about framing devices, particularly when they add little value to the tale, and must be reminded when they were used. I believe that Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice was framed, a tale told by an older MC of his formative years.

For a framing device that worked well and actually contributed, with a great ending of its own, Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants is narrated by the MC when he's in his 90's in a nursing home... but he still has his own story to contribute.

And ages ago I read a book that totally spoiled itself with its framing device, giving away its own ending - R. A. MacAvoy's The Lens of the World, IIRC, compiled from a serialized story. The thing was, the story wasn't finished, it was just Book 1, yet the framing device gave away how things ended in the first book. (I believe I read somewhere later on that the framed conclusion was forced on the story when it was converted to a novel, by editors who didn't want readers confused by the fact that it was just the first part of a series... 'cause, you know, us fantasy readers totally are incapable of handling it when a story is told over multiple installments... Don't quote me on that, though, 'cause I may be jumbling it in my head with another story.) In any event, I really didn't like it so I never read on; the lousy spoilery ending was just the final nail in that coffin.

The Power by Naomi Alderman. The main story is a 'pretend novel' that the author and an expert discuss through letters in the prologue and epilogue.

Much of Lovecraft and the post-Lovecraftians is framed as someone's recollections of events glimpsed beyond the veil that separates the human reality from the cruel cold voids where elder gods undulate dementedly while gibbering and fifing.

Edgar Huntly, a novel c.1799. It's subtitle is Memoirs of a Sleepwalker, and the device is Edgar Huntly unfolding in a letter this really weird and unsettling story of what happened to him. Talk about unreliable narrators...

And yes, early novels very often had some "device" to explain why the narrator is telling the story--they are confessing to a friend or writing a letter or whatever.

I think the device became popular when authors were starting to write what we would now class as 'fantasy'. Weird tales, strange adventures, places that don't exist, etc. It's a way of telling the reader that this is not a story of the here and now. A device, that in fairy tales, is summed up as 'once upon a time'.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and The Distant Hours by Kate Morton. Both are literary gothics.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is framed with the narrator telling about the past in a direct and thoughtful way. She compares her past and present throughout the story. Kate Morton etc are very influenced by that book (and for good reason).