570. What was the first novel printed in what is now the United States?
566. I'm not sure the difference in perception is a U.S./U.K. division. The BBC has a Gaskell biography whose first sentence describes her as a novelist and the author of a biography of Bronte, without mentioning the name of a specific novel.
I'm inclined to think it might be a generational difference. With the rise of women's studies and feminist scholarship, a contemporary biography of a female novelist, who used a masculine pseudonym, by another female novelist becomes an important book that is probably frequently required reading in university literature courses, and the authors of some of the online biographies of Gaskell may be influenced by this.
