Final answer:
The critique of 'Edwardian' fiction focuses on its realism and naturalism, depicting life truthfully without romantic idealization, and its modernist tendencies that question Victorian values and explore the complex inner lives of characters.
Step-by-step explanation:
The critique of 'Edwardian' fiction often centers on its deviation from the romantic idealism that characterized earlier periods and the shift towards realism. This literary approach is focused on representing life in its truthful complexity without idealization. Writers like Charles Dickens epitomized Victorian realism with precise, visual descriptions of people and places. The Edwardian era, following the Victorian, brought with it its changes, as writers began to explore even more diverse and complex styles, influenced in part by societal shifts such as urbanization, industrialization, and the emergence of the middle class.
An important facet of this period's fiction is the attention to realism, where authors like William Dean Howells privileged realism over idealism in their writing, thereby crafting stories with plausible conflicts and three-dimensional characters that reflected the social issues of contemporary society.