A comprehensive survey of the British novel from its origins in the 18th century to the modern day. Organized chronologically, this reference work traces the development of the novel and provides essays on its most illustrious practitioners, from Fielding and Austen to the postmodernists. The contributors challenge contemporary views of the classics by examining canonical writers, as well as women and post-colonial novelists. They also examine subgenres such as picaresque fiction, travelogues, historical romances, detective novels, adventures and the Bildungsroman. Brief biographies of 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 evaluatiing 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
* the more disciplined, realistic, and didactic strain that appears in the...

This text traces the social and moral representations of the period in extended readings of the major novelists (Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Burney and Sterne), as well as evaluating the importance of lesser known ones. The author traces the shifting subject matter of the novel, discussing: scandalous and amatory fictions by Behn, Manley and Eliza Haywood; criminal narratives of the early part of the century by Defoe; the more disciplined, realistic, and didactic strain that appears in the 1740's and 1750's; novels promoting new ideas about the nature of domestic life; and novels by women...