The Eighteenth Century English Novel

Novels of the eighteenth century usually offer wedded bliss as a reward to their heroines. How did these novels affect—and how were they affected by—the women who were reading them? By drawing upon thousands of unpublished documents from the era, written by more than 250 women, Brophy creates a picture of the real lives of eighteenth-century women and then examines the work of seven novelists in relation to this portrait. Excerpts from letters, diaries, and journals, written by women ranging from servants to nobility, reveal the stages of feminine life in the 1700s: dutiful daughter, courted maiden, obedient wife, and pitiful widow or spinster. Their lives are assessed against those portrayed in the works of seven novelists—five women (Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, Sarah Scott, Clara Reeve and Fanny Burney) and two men (Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson). Fiction both reflects and creates the values of its time. In the eighteenth century, marriage was regarded as every woman's vocation and the novel often reinforced this conviction. “Only leave me myself,” the heroine's plea in Richardson's Clarissa, laments the dependent position of women in the age. However, the novel also influenced the self-perception of eighteenth-century women in a positive way, Brophy asserts, by admiring their intelligence, by condemning sexual transgressions in and out of marriage, and, most important, by placing women at the center of their own stories, as heroines in their own right. The abundant primary materials and straightforward writing in Women's Lives and the Eigtheenth-Century English Novel make this a book of interest to scholars of social and cultural history and to students of the novel.

A Companion to the Eighteenth-century Novel furnishes readers with a sophisticated vision of the eighteenth-century novel in its political, aesthetic, and moral contexts. An up-to-date resource for the study of the eighteenth-century novel Furnishes readers with a sophisticated vision of the eighteenth-century novel in its political, aesthetic, and moral context Foregrounds those topics of most historical and political relevance to the twenty-first century Explores formative influences on the eighteenth-century novel, its engagement with the major issues and philosophies of the period, and its lasting legacy Covers both traditional themes, such as narrative authority and print culture, and cutting-edge topics, such as globalization, nationhood, technology, and science Considers both canonical and non-canonical literature

Reading the Eighteenth-Century Novel is a lively exploration of the evolution of the English novel from 1688-1815. A range of major works and authors are discussed along with important developments in the genre, and the impact of novels on society at the time. The text begins with a discussion of the “rise of the novel” in the long eighteenth century and various theories about the economic, social, and ideological changes that caused it. Subsequent chapters examine ten particular novels, from Oroonoko and Moll Flanders to Tom Jones and Emma, using each one to introduce and discuss different rhetorical theories of narrative. The way in which books developed and changed during this period, breaking new ground, and influencing later developments is also discussed, along with key themes such as the representation of gender, class, and nationality. The final chapter explores how this literary form became a force for social and ideological change by the end of the period. Written by a highly experienced scholar of English literature, this engaging textbook guides readers through the intricacies of a transformational period for the novel.

Desire and Truth offers a major reassessment of the history of eighteenth-century fiction by showing how plot challenges or reinforces conventional categories of passion and rationality. Arguing that fiction creates and conveys its essential truths through plot, Patricia Meyer Spacks demonstrates that eighteenth-century fiction is both profoundly realistic and consistently daring.

In this study intended for general readers, eminent critic Patricia Meyer Spacks provides a fresh, engaging account of the early history of the English novel. Novel Beginnings departs from the traditional, narrow focus on the development of the realistic novel to emphasize the many kinds of experimentation that marked the genre in the eighteenth century before its conventions were firmly established in the nineteenth. Treating well-known works like Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy in conjunction with less familiar texts such as Sarah Fielding’s The Cry (a kind of hybrid novel and play) and Jane Barker’s A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (a novel of adventure replete with sentimental verse and numerous subnarratives), the book evokes the excitement of a multifaceted and unpredictable process of growth and change. Investigating fiction throughout the 1700s, Spacks delineates the individuality of specific texts while suggesting connections among novels. She sketches a wide range of forms and themes, including Providential narratives, psychological thrillers, romans à clef, sentimental parables, political allegories, Gothic romances, and many others. These multiple narrative experiments show the impossibility of thinking of eighteenth-century fiction simply as a precursor to the nineteenth-century novel, Spacks shows. Instead, the vast variety of engagements with the problems of creating fiction demonstrates that literary history—by no means inexorable—might have taken quite a different course.

A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature is a lively exploration of one of the most diverse and innovative periods in literary history. Capturing the richness and excitement of the era, this book provides extensive coverage of major authors, poets, dramatists, and journalists of the period, such as Dryden, Pope and Swift, while also exploring the works of important writers who have received less attention by modern scholars, such as Matthew Prior and Charles Churchill. Uniquely, the book also discusses noncanonical, working-class writers and demotic works of the era. During the eighteenth-century, Britain experienced vast social, political, economic, and existential changes, greatly influencing the literary world. The major forms of verse, poetry, fiction and non-fiction, experimental works, drama, and political prose from writers such as Montagu, Finch, Johnson, Goldsmith and Cowper, are discussed here in relation to their historical context. A History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature is essential reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of English literature. Topics covered include: Verse in the early 18th century, from Pope, Gay, and Swift to Addison, Defoe, Montagu, and Finch Poetry from the mid- to late-century, highlighting the works of Johnson, Gray, Collins, Smart, Goldsmith, and Cowper among others, as well as women and working-class poets Prose Fiction in the early and 18th century, including Behn, Haywood, Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett The novel past mid-century, including experimental works by Johnson, Sterne, Mackenzie, Walpole, Goldsmith, and Burney Non-fiction prose, including political and polemical prose 18th century drama

The Self and It makes a fresh and bold intervention in histories and theories of the rise of the novel by arguing that the material objects proliferating in eighteenth-century England's consumer markets worked in conjunction with the novel as vital tools for fashioning the modern self.

The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth Century Novel is the first published book to cover the 'eighteenth-century English novel' in its entirety. It is an indispensible resource for those with an interest in the history of the novel.

In the past twenty years our understanding of the novel's emergence in eighteenth-century Britain has drastically changed. Drawing on new research in social and political history, the twelve contributors to this Companion challenge and refine the traditional view of the novel's origins and purposes. In various ways each seeks to show that the novel is not defined primarily by its realism of representation, but by the new ideological and cultural functions it serves in the emerging modern world of print culture. Sentimental and Gothic fiction and fiction by women are discussed, alongside detailed readings of work by Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Henry Fielding, Sterne, Smollett, and Burney. This multifaceted picture of the novel in its formative decades provides a comprehensive and indispensable guide for students of the eighteenth-century British novel, and its place within the culture of its time.

In the eighteenth century, the novel became established as a popular literary form all over Europe. Britain proved an especially fertile ground, with Defoe, Fielding, Richardson and Burney as early exponents of the novel form. The Cambridge Introduction to the Eighteenth-Century Novel considers the development of the genre in its formative period in Britain. Rather than present its history as a linear progression, April London gives an original new structure to the field, organizing it through three broad thematic clusters – identity, community and history. Within each of these themes, she explores the central tensions of eighteenth-century fiction: between secrecy and communicativeness, independence and compliance, solitude and family, cosmopolitanism and nation-building. The reader will gain a thorough understanding of both prominent and lesser-known novels and novelists, key social and literary contexts, the tremendous formal variety of the early novel and its growth from a marginal to a culturally central genre.