Although Smollett's obvious masculine sensibility has become a commonplace in criticism of the 18th-century novel, the basis and particularities of that sensibility have never been examined. In actuality, his treatment of women--heroines, victims, and comic or grotesque--proves far more complex than...

Although Smollett's obvious masculine sensibility has become a commonplace in criticism of the 18th-century novel, the basis and particularities of that sensibility have never been examined. In actuality, his treatment of women--heroines, victims, and comic or grotesque--proves far more complex than conventional commentary suggests. This study attempts to show that in each category Smollett's treatment depends on the fictional purposes that these characters serve in his novels.

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.

The English Novel in History 1700-1780 provides students with specific contexts for the early novel in response to a new understanding of eigtheenth-century Britain. It traces the social and moral representations of the period in extended readings of the major novelists, as well as evaluating the...

The English Novel in History 1700-1780 provides students with specific contexts for the early novel in response to a new understanding of eigtheenth-century Britain. It traces the social and moral representations of the period in extended readings of the major novelists, as well as evaluating the importance of lesser known ones. John Richetti traces the shifting subject matter of the novel, discussing: * scandalous and amatory fictions * criminal narratives of the early part of the century * novels promoting new ideas about the nature of domestic life * novels by women and how they relate to the shift of subject matter.

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-