The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel
From Richardson to George Eliot

Leah Price's book, first published in 2000, challenges established theories of 'the rise of the novel'.

Leah Price (Author)

9780521782081, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 September 2000

234 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.52 kg

' … vigorous and ramificatory …' BARS Bulletin

The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel, first published in 2000, brings together two traditionally antagonistic fields, book history and narrative theory, to challenge established theories of 'the rise of the novel'. Leah Price shows that far from leveling class or gender distinctions, as has long been claimed, the novel has consistently located them within its own audience. Shedding new light on Richardson and Radcliffe, Scott and George Eliot, this book asks why the epistolary novel disappeared, how the book review emerged, why eighteenth-century abridgers designed their books for women while Victorian publishers marketed them to men, and how editors' reproduction of old texts has shaped authors' production of new ones. This innovative study will change the way we think not just about the history of reading, but about the genealogy of the canon wars, the future of intellectual property, and the role that anthologies play in our own classrooms.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Richardson's economies of scale
2. Cultures of the commonplace
3. Knox's Scissor-Doings
4. George Eliot and the production of consumers
Notes
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]