Definition of "novel"

Since I had started to break down all my writing and get rid of all facility and try to make instead of describe, writing had been wonderful to do. But it was very difficult, and I did not know how I would ever write anything as long as a novel. It often took me a full morning of work to write a paragraph.

1964, Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 151

merry tales […] such as the old woman told of Psyche in Apuleius, Boccace novels, and the rest, quarum auditione pueri delectantur, senes narratione, which some delight to hear, some to tell, all are well pleased with.

1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, partition 2, section 2, member 4

Libum is a cake made of Honey (sugar is a nouvelle, since the discovery of America), meale and oyle.

1687, John Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, page 7

The normal and natural relationship of emperor and churchman was summed up by Justinian in one of his novels […]

1979, Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages, 476–752, page 15