Cecilia is an heiress, but she can only keep her fortune if her husband will consent to take her surname. Fanny Burney's unusual love story and deft social satire was much admired on its first publication in 1782 for its subtle interweaving of comedy, humanity, and social analysis. Controversial in...

Cecilia is an heiress, but she can only keep her fortune if her husband will consent to take her surname. Fanny Burney's unusual love story and deft social satire was much admired on its first publication in 1782 for its subtle interweaving of comedy, humanity, and social analysis. Controversial in its time, this eighteenth-century novel seems entirely fresh in relation to late twentieth-century concerns.

First published in 1796, Camilla, Fanny Burney's third novel, proved to be an enormous popular success. It deals with the matrimonial concerns of a group of young people-Camilla Tyrold and her sisters, the daughters of a country parson, and their cousin Indiana Lynmere-and, in particular, with the...

First published in 1796, Camilla, Fanny Burney's third novel, proved to be an enormous popular success. It deals with the matrimonial concerns of a group of young people-Camilla Tyrold and her sisters, the daughters of a country parson, and their cousin Indiana Lynmere-and, in particular, with the love affair between Camilla herself and her eligible suitor, Edgar Mandlebert.

What do Pamela, Shamela, and Evelina have in common? Who is Coningsby? Where is The Moonstone? When does one need A Room of One's Own? Why is it that Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit? And just how good is the British novel? These are just a few of the questions answered in The Columbia History of the...

What do Pamela, Shamela, and Evelina have in common? Who is Coningsby? Where is The Moonstone? When does one need A Room of One's Own? Why is it that Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit? And just how good is the British novel? These are just a few of the questions answered in The Columbia History of the British Novel. John Richetti's comprehensive history takes us from the birth of the novel in the eighteenth century through its social and culture-conscious growing pains in the nineteenth century to its angst-ridden maturity in the twentieth century. Concise, cohesive, and complementary to any collection of must-read classics, The Columbia History of the British Novel challenges and enlightens us by examining canonical writers as well as women and postcolonial novelists. Discover the origins of the novel in the "scandalous" books of Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Delarivier Manley and follow its development through Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne against the backdrop of the novel's meteoric rise in the 1700s. Follow Frances Burney and the rise of the woman novelist, and the gothic novel as invented by Horace Walpole and perfected by Mary Shelley and Matthew Lewis. Remember remarkable reunions in Jane Austen; the bond between chivalry, Waverley, and Sir Walter Scott; the Brontes, Amelia Opie, Maria Edgeworth, and the tradition of Romantic women's fiction; Charles Dickens and the professionalization of literature; George Eliot and the novel of ideas; and Wilkie Collins and the sensation mania of the 1860s. Continue through the nineteenth century with the "Condition of England" novels of Benjamin Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell, Hardy's tales of class and sexualdifference, and Anglo-Indian perspectives on the empire from Rudyard Kipling and Philip Meadows Taylor. Enter the twentieth century and examine the modern novel with Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Then trace the anti-

The Fame Machine explores how the concept of the literary career was reshaped by the commodification of writing in the eighteenth century, a period between an age of substantial sponsorship by the nobility and the fully developed literary market of the nineteenth century. It argues that, as the...

The Fame Machine explores how the concept of the literary career was reshaped by the commodification of writing in the eighteenth century, a period between an age of substantial sponsorship by the nobility and the fully developed literary market of the nineteenth century. It argues that, as the conditions of literary production shifted from a patronage system to an open market, the traditional means by which authors measured their success and acquired their credentials changed as well. The book shows that in the open market critical periodicals stepped in and assumed the role of official arbiters of literary merit, to the extent that Byron would call the reviewers of his day the "monarch-makers in poetry and prose". In tracing this process, the author focuses on two successful mid-century journals, the Monthly Review (founded in 1749) and the Critical Review (founded in 1756), which dedicated themselves exclusively to reviewing new publications. Examining the professional lives of Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, Tobias Smollett, and several women authors, the book makes the case that the Reviews in effect constructed the narratives that we would now call literary careers.

Pain and suffering, once associated with punishment for sin, became regarded as a purposeless evil that was hostile to human welfare. The works of Thomas Beddoes, Coleridge, and Shelley embody the change in attitude toward suffering and lay the groundwork for the general use of anesthesia in modern...

Pain and suffering, once associated with punishment for sin, became regarded as a purposeless evil that was hostile to human welfare. The works of Thomas Beddoes, Coleridge, and Shelley embody the change in attitude toward suffering and lay the groundwork for the general use of anesthesia in modern medicine. Papper contends that there was no real societal readiness to treat or prevent pain until the idea of the worth of the common man or woman was established by the upheaval of the French Revolution. The humanitarian concepts that we take for granted were relatively recent developments in Western society and were associated with the recognition of the importance of the individual.

At the beginning of 1778, twenty-five-year-old Fanny Burney, second daughter of England's most eminent musicologist, Dr Charles Burney, was an unknown. By the year's end, however, she had emerged from his shadow as the author of Evelina, or, A Yound Lady's Entrance into the World, a universally...

At the beginning of 1778, twenty-five-year-old Fanny Burney, second daughter of England's most eminent musicologist, Dr Charles Burney, was an unknown. By the year's end, however, she had emerged from his shadow as the author of Evelina, or, A Yound Lady's Entrance into the World, a universally acclaimed novel which admirers ranked with the works of Fielding and Richardson. The present volume - the third of a projected twelve-volume critical edition of Burney's earlier journals and letters - covers the period from January 1778 to December 1779. It reveals her striking transformation into a `celebrity' as she is welcomed into London's literary society, and her mixed delight and terror at this reception. As Burney becomes a regular at the Streatham Park home of Henry and Hester Thrale, she is befriended by another regular visitior, Samuel Johnson, and given the opportunity to observe and record the playful and affectionate side of Johnson's character, a side largely missed by Boswell. Urged by the Streathamites to write a comedy for the London stage, she responds with `The Witlings', a satiric portrait of London's bluestockings. Alarmed by the prospect of disapproval from the powerful bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu, Burney's father and her friend Samuel Crisp dissuade her from releasing the piece. Her disappointment is eased by the whirling social life that she enjoys in the company of the Thrales at Streatham and at Brighton, and on which she comments with characteristic perception and humour.