The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction

This book explores the adaptation and appropriation of a range of canonical and lesser-known British and Irish novels of the eighteenth century.

Daniel Cook (Edited by), Nicholas Seager (Edited by)

9781107668584, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 December 2018

314 pages, 3 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.6 cm, 0.47 kg

'… a timely, accessible and engaging study of adaptations, remediations, reappropriations and other reinterpretations of eighteenth-century novels. As a result, it is of interest to scholars in literary and adaptation studies alike.' Ana Daniela Coelho, English Studies

The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction probes the adaptation and appropriation of a wide range of canonical and lesser-known British and Irish novels in the long eighteenth century, from the period of Daniel Defoe and Eliza Haywood through to that of Jane Austen and Walter Scott. Major authors, including Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne, are discussed alongside writers such as Sarah Fielding and Ann Radcliffe, whose literary significance is now increasingly being recognised. By uncovering this neglected aspect of the reception of eighteenth-century fiction, this collection contributes to developing our understanding of the form of the early novel, its place in a broader culture of entertainment then and now, and its interactions with a host of other genres and media, including theatre, opera, poetry, print caricatures and film.

Introduction
1. On authorship, appropriation, and eighteenth-century fiction Daniel Cook
2. The afterlife of family romance Michael McKeon
3. From Pícaro to Pirate: afterlives of the Picaresque in early eighteenth-century fiction Leah Orr
4. Ghosts of the guardian in Sir Charles Grandison and Bleak House Sarah Raff
5. The novel's afterlife in the newspaper, 1712–50 Nicholas Seager
6. Wit and humour for the heart of sensibility: the beauties of Fielding and Sterne M.-C. Newbould
7. The spectral iamb: the poetic afterlife of the late eighteenth-century novel Dahlia Porter
8. Rethinking fictionality in the eighteenth-century puppet theatre David A. Brewer
9. The novel in musical theatre: Pamela, Caleb Williams, Frankenstein and Ivanhoe Michael Burden
10. Gillray's Gulliver and the 1803 invasion scare David Francis Taylor
11. Defoe's cultural afterlife, mainly on screen Robert Mayer
12. Happiness in Austen's Sense and Sensibility and its afterlife in film Jill Heydt-Stevenson
13. Refashioning The History of England: Jane Austen and 1066 and All That Peter Sabor
Select bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]