Making the Novel: Fiction and Society in Britain, 1660-1789

by Brean Hammond, Shaun Regan

Overview

Hammond and Regan advance a new cultural reading of the formation of the British novel. Rejecting a teleological narrative of the genre's rise, the study presents a dynamic picture of the emergence of the novel, that focuses upon formal innovation, social engagement, and artistic and commercial competition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333628546
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/01/2006
Edition description:	2006
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

BREAN HAMMOND is Professor of English at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author of numerous books and articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writing, including Professional Imaginative Writing in England 1670-1740 (1997). He is a former President of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

SHAUN REGAN is Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature at Queen's University Belfast, UK. He has published articles on Sterne, print culture, and the culture of politeness. He was formerly a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin.
BREAN HAMMOND is Professor of English at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author of numerous books and articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writing, including Professional Imaginative Writing in England 1670-1740 (1997). He is a former President of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

SHAUN REGAN is Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature at Queen's University Belfast, UK. He has published articles on Sterne, print culture, and the culture of politeness. He was formerly a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Modelling the Novel
Missing Parts: Fiction to Defoe
Novels and Anti-Novels: Contesting Fictions
Teaching Readers to Read: Richardson and Fielding
Renewing the Novel: Novelty, Originality, and New Directions
The Sympathetic Strain: Sterne and Sentimental Fiction
Narrating the Nation: Leisure, Luxury, and Politeness
Conclusion: Making the Novel, Reading the Novel
Bibliography
Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A wide-ranging and sophisticated study of the novel that neatly combines a survey of the history and theory of the novel with a series of insightful readings of some of the major works of the eighteenth-century. Best of all, it's unfailingly lively and readable and brings the eighteenth-century novel to life.' - Jack Lynch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA

'...[a] thorough and engaging account of the British novel's evolution over the course of the long eighteenth century...The connections forged by Making the Novel bring the period, in all its delightful weirdness, to life - no mean feat.' - Modern Philology

Editorial Reviews

"What a fine book this is! Something like this is surely needed; most books aimed at undergraduates are broader than the eighteenth-century novel; most books on the eighteenth-century novel are inaccessible to undergraduates. And few works for either audience combine an introduction to the theory of the novel with a set of specific readings of novels. It touches on most of the major canonical figures, but also includes some less well-known works and authors. All of which is to say that it fills a need. The book is not only well-conceived; it's also well written. It keeps up a lively pace, and it provides plentiful examples that make the authors' points well. Perhaps best of all...it also has genuinely new things to say."--Jack Lynch, Rutgers University

From the Publisher