[f. as prec. + -IST.] A narrator of or writer of fiction; a story-teller, novelist.
1829. Westm. Rev. XI. 490 The author of Pelham, partly because as a writer of considerable power, feeling, and literary aptitude, he stands among the foremost of the prose fictionists of the hour, and partly because he forms a conspicuous example of the truth of the specified theory.
1836. Lytton, Athens (1837), II. 402. He was driven to embellish his history with the romantic legend—the awful superstition—the gossip anecdote—which yet characterise the stories of the popular and oral fictionist, in the bazaars of the Mussulman, or on the sea-sands of Sicily.
1875. M. Pattison, Ess. (1889), I. 309. If some of our fictionists have left this traditional groove, as, e.g., Dr. Farrar in Julian Home, it has been by sacrificing altogether the local colouring.
