Book contents
- Romantic Fiction and Literary Excess in the Minerva Press Era
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
- Romantic Fiction and Literary Excess in the Minerva Press Era
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Minerva’s Writers and Reviewers
- Chapter 2 Godwin, Bage, Parsons, and Novels as They Are
- Chapter 3 Imitating Ann Radcliffe
- Chapter 4 Hannah More’s Cœlebs and the Novel of the Moment
- Chapter 5 Fiction as Fashion from Belinda to Miss Byron
- Chapter 6 Walter Scott’s Industrial Antiques
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
Chapter 2 - Godwin, Bage, Parsons, and Novels as They Are
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2023
- Romantic Fiction and Literary Excess in the Minerva Press Era
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
- Romantic Fiction and Literary Excess in the Minerva Press Era
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Minerva’s Writers and Reviewers
- Chapter 2 Godwin, Bage, Parsons, and Novels as They Are
- Chapter 3 Imitating Ann Radcliffe
- Chapter 4 Hannah More’s Cœlebs and the Novel of the Moment
- Chapter 5 Fiction as Fashion from Belinda to Miss Byron
- Chapter 6 Walter Scott’s Industrial Antiques
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
Summary
This chapter shows how the new demands of a growing market shaped the development of 1790s political novels. In the wake of the French revolution, the proliferation of English fiction began to strike many observers as particularly dangerous – critics feared that novels might be the vehicle of threateningly radical and immoral ideas, while many authors expressed anxieties about where and by whom their works would be read. Examining novels by writers including Eliza Parsons, William Godwin, and Robert Bage, this chapter argues that political ideas across the spectrum were often conceived and expressed as functions of multiplicity: How many readers, how many epistolary voices, how many viewpoints, how many ideological challenges could one novel handle? Focusing first on the proliferation of voices that a long novel allows, and then on concerns about the alarmingly wide and indiscriminate spread of fiction to its readers, this chapter considers how these two ways of thinking about fiction’s function tie narrative style to the decade’s radical political debates.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023