Book Description

This historical bibliography provides an entirely new foundation for the literary history of the late eighteenth century and the Romantic age. Offering a fresh assessment of the work of all novelists of the period, the two volumes address problems faced by generations of literary scholars and historians concerned with the development of the English novel. This first volume records full details of all known prose novels in English first published in the British Isles in the final three decades of the eighteenth century. They include many new discoveries, attributions to an extraordinary range of novelists and the first English translations of much Continental popular fiction. The bibliography firmly establishes publication details for many novels now apparently without any extant copies. A leading feature of the bibliography is its examination of a copy of every identified surviving novel. Research by James Raven, Antonia Forster, and many other international collaborators, has allowed a reconstruction of the full cast of British novelists of the period, their publishers and reviewers. A full transcription of titles and imprint lines is given, together with much other bibliographical and historical information, including contemporary reviews (with generous quotation), dedications, and pricing and printing details. Shelf-mark, microform and other library references assist readers to consult the surviving novels in modern library and research collections all over the world. In an introductory historical essay, James Raven considers the different themes embraced by the novel, profiles of popular authorship, translation, the economics and circumstances of novel production and design, and the scope of literary circulation and reception. By revisiting this history of the novel, identifying rare books now scattered across the world, and reconstructing the history of popular literature now lost, the volume challenges existing literary canons and refines our understanding of the range of imaginative writing and authorship in a critical period of English literature.