There are numerous twentieth century writers in English who are not technically native speakers of the language, and whose relation to it is ambivalent, problematic or even hostile: by a simple kinship analogy one may often speak of the 'stepmother tongue'. Whilst fully aware of the current debates in postcolonial theory, John Skinner is also conscious of its sometimes unhelpful complexities and contradictions. The focus of this study is thus firmly on the fictional practice of the writers discussed. He offers the reader an insight into the diversity and rewards of contemporary anglophone...

An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Fiction deals with fiction of the 'long eighteenth century', using a clearly defined pool of texts and corpus of writers. The first part of the study discusses the broader issues of definitions and approaches, genre and gender, and canon formation; the second part, after a more general discussion of Richardson and Fielding, offers a series of five paired readings, juxtaposing texts by Behn and Defoe, Sterne and Smollett, Lennox and Burney, Radcliffe and Godwin and Austen.