Description
Book SynopsisNow issued for the first time in paperback with a new introduction by the author, this is a study of those narratives which were written and widely read in England during the first forty years of the eighteenth century, but which have been hitherto neglected or despised by historians of the novel. The author makes no claims for these works as literary achievements. They are seen, rather, as vigorous and highly successful commercial exploitations of enduring stereotypes such as the criminal, the traveller-merchant, the persecuted maiden, and the aristocratic seducer. Placing them against the background of the age, the book sets out to account for the attractiveness of such figures and their characteristic adventures, and to evaluate the importance of these narratives in providing a set of conventional and meaningful characters and situations for the mid-eighteenth century masters of the novel such as Richardson and Fielding.
Trade Review`excellent and intelligent book' Times Literary Supplement
`a real book, a good book. He is thoughtful and he makes you think. He sees the inherent triviality of his material, but sees in this a far from trivial question, "What is the use of bad art?" To raise the question at all is to give the book substance. It tells us that the material is going to be handled intelligently.' Review of English Studies
Table of ContentsThe rise of the novel reconsidered; rogues and whores - heroes and anti-heroes; travellers, priates and pilgrims - the pirate, Faustian ruffian, Crusoe and after; "as long as Atalantis shall be read" - the scandal chronicles of Mrs Manley and Mrs Haywood; Mrs haywood and the Novella - the erotic and the pathetic; the novel as pious polemic - Mrs Aubin and Mrs Barker, Mrs Elizabeth Rowe; the relevance of the unreadable.
