Abstract: There are thousands of advertisements for novels in modern newspapers and journals， from which we can obtain the information about disappeared works or special issues of novels， figure out the time of their publication or literary events， examine the interaction between authors， publishers and readers， and then comprehensively analyze and depict the complete picture of unknown literary events or their development. Because traditional analyses of authors and works cannot solve the abovementioned issues， the thousands of advertisements at that time provide great support for the research of modern novels.

Key words: modern novels, advertisements for novels, function