The Cambridge Companion to Fiction in the Romantic Period

An overview of British fiction written between the mid-1760s and the early 1830s in its historical and cultural contexts.

Richard Maxwell (Edited by), Katie Trumpener (Edited by)

9780521862523, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 February 2008

308 pages, 20 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.6 kg

'The Cambridge Companion to Fiction in the Romantic Period will be an essential addition to the humanities collections of academic libraries. It is an excellent introduction to an emerging corpus of literary works for undergraduate students, postgraduates on taught courses and the interested general reader.' Reference Reviews

While poetry has been the genre most closely associated with the Romantic period, the novel of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has attracted many more readers and students in recent years. Its canon has been widened to include less well known authors alongside Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Maria Edgeworth and Thomas Love Peacock. Over the last generation, especially, a remarkable range of popular works from the period have been re-discovered and reread intensively. This Companion offers an overview of British fiction written between roughly the mid-1760s and the early 1830s and is an ideal guide to the major authors, historical and cultural contexts, and later critical reception. The contributors to this volume represent the most up-to-date directions in scholarship, charting the ways in which the period's social, political and intellectual redefinitions created new fictional subjects, forms and audiences.

Introduction Richard Maxwell and Katie Trumpener
1. The historiography of fiction in the Romantic period Richard Maxwell
2. Publishing, authorship, and reading William St Clair
3. Gothic fiction Deidre Shauna Lynch
4. The historical novel Richard Maxwell
5. Thinking locally: novelistic worlds in provincial fiction Martha Bohrer
6. Poetry and the novel Marshall Brown
7. Orientalism and Empire James Watt
8. Intellectual history and political theory Paul Keen
9. Women writers and the woman's novel: the trope of maternal transmission Jill Campbell
10. Tales for child readers Katie Trumpener
11. Sentimental fiction Ann Wierda Rowland
12. Fiction and the working classes Gary Kelly
13. The Irish novel 1800–29 Ina Ferris
14. Scotland and the novel Ian Duncan
Guide to further reading.

Subject Areas: Classic fiction [pre c 1945 FC], Literature & literary studies [D]