Description
Book SynopsisPresents a wide-ranging and humorous introduction to the English novel from Daniel Defoe to the present day. This book distils the essentials of the theory of the novel. It covers the works of major authors, including Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Charles Dickens and George Eliot.
Trade Review"Eagleton's presentation of the history of the novel is admirably clear and almost entirely free of the disfiguring jargon so relied upon by theorists and bamboozlers."
The Irish Independentà
"Eagleton, almost alone among academic literary critics of his generation, has never been afraid of asking big questions about big things. In The English Novel: An Introduction he takes aim at a very large target indeed. Being Eagleton (the most articulately and discriminately ideological critic of our time) he does, of course, do much more than merely 'introduce'. He makes sense of the English novel."
John Sutherland, Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature, UCL
Table of ContentsPreface.
1. What is a Novel?.
2. Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift.
3. Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson.
4. Laurence Sterne.
5. Walter Scott and Jane Austen.
6. The Brontës.
7. Charles Dickens.
8. George Eliot.
9. Thomas Hardy.
10. Henry James.
11. Joseph Conrad.
12. D.H. Lawrence.
13. James Joyce.
14. Virginia Woolf.
Postcript: After the Wake.
Notes.
Index
