The Columbia History of the British Novel - Hardcover

by John Richetti (Editor), John Bender (Editor), Deirdre David (Editor)

A comprehensive survey of the British novel from its origins in the 18th century to the modern day. Organized chronologically, this reference work traces the development of the novel and provides essays on its most illustrious practitioners, from Fielding and Austen to the postmodernists. The contributors challenge contemporary views of the classics by examining canonical writers, as well as women and post-colonial novelists. They also examine subgenres such as picaresque fiction, travelogues, historical romances, detective novels, adventures and the Bildungsroman. Brief biographies of the novelists discussed are given, along with lists for further reading.

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What do Pamela, Shamela, and Evelina have in common? Who is Coningsby? Where is The Moonstone? When does one need A Room of One's Own? Why is it that Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit? And just how good is the British novel? These are just a few of the questions answered in The Columbia History of the British Novel. John Richetti's comprehensive history takes us from the birth of the novel in the eighteenth century through its social and culture-conscious growing pains in the nineteenth century to its angst-ridden maturity in the twentieth century. Concise, cohesive, and complementary to any collection of must-read classics, The Columbia History of the British Novel challenges and enlightens us by examining canonical writers as well as women and postcolonial novelists. Discover the origins of the novel in the "scandalous" books of Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Delarivier Manley and follow its development through Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne against the backdrop of the novel's meteoric rise in the 1700s. Follow Frances Burney and the rise of the woman novelist, and the gothic novel as invented by Horace Walpole and perfected by Mary Shelley and Matthew Lewis. Remember remarkable reunions in Jane Austen; the bond between chivalry, Waverley, and Sir Walter Scott; the Brontes, Amelia Opie, Maria Edgeworth, and the tradition of Romantic women's fiction; Charles Dickens and the professionalization of literature; George Eliot and the novel of ideas; and Wilkie Collins and the sensation mania of the 1860s. Continue through the nineteenth century with the "Condition of England" novels of Benjamin Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell, Hardy's tales of class and sexualdifference, and Anglo-Indian perspectives on the empire from Rudyard Kipling and Philip Meadows Taylor. Enter the twentieth century and examine the modern novel with Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Then trace the anti-modernist movement with Kingsley Amis, C. P. Snow, and Angus Wilson and, finally, keep up with contemporaries - Doris Lessing, A. S. Byatt, Anita Brookner, Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Jeanette Winterson. The Columbia History of the British Novel lets us do all these things as it presents literary critics: Toni Bowers on early amatory fiction; James Thompson on Jane Austen; Ina Ferris on William Thackeray; David Trotter on Arnold Bennett, George Moore, and George Gissing; Michael Gorra on colonial and postcolonial novels from Rudyard Kipling to Salman Rushdie; Michael Seidel on James Joyce; and Carol McGuirk on postwar feminisms from Margaret Drabble to Angela Carter. The Columbia History of the British Novel examines classics in light of the critical theories of Bakhtin, Lukacs, and Foucault, among others, as well as a panoply of such subgenres as picaresque fiction, adventures, travelogues, utopian and dystopian prose, historical romances, detective novels, sentimental novels, and the Bildungsroman. This superb history also includes brief biographies of novelists discussed and lists of further reading.