The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Description

The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction probes the adaptation and appropriation of a wide range of canonical and lesser-known British and Irish novels in the long eighteenth century, from the period of Daniel Defoe and Eliza Haywood through to that of Jane Austen and Walter Scott. Major authors, including Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne, are discussed alongside writers such as Sarah Fielding and Ann Radcliffe, whose literary significance is now increasingly being recognised. By uncovering this neglected aspect of the reception of eighteenth-century fiction, this collection contributes to developing our understanding of the form of the early novel, its place in a broader culture of entertainment then and now, and its interactions with a host of other genres and media, including theatre, opera, poetry, print caricatures and film.

Daniel Cook is Lecturer in English at the University of Dundee. He is the author of Thomas Chatterton and Neglected Genius, 1760-1830 (2013), the editor of The Lives of Jonathan Swift (2011) and the co-editor (with Amy Culley) of Women's Life Writing: Gender, Genre, and Authorship, 1700-1850 (2012). Daniel has published essays on a range of topics ranging from Pope to Wordsworth in such journals as The Library, Philological Quarterly, and The Review of English Studies. Nicholas Seager is Lecturer in English at Keele University. He has published essays on authors ranging from John Bunyan to Oliver Goldsmith, and in journals including the Modern Language Review, The Library, Philological Quarterly, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, and The Eighteenth-Century Novel. He is the author of The Rise of the Novel: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism (2012) and a forthcoming monograph, Daniel Defoe and the History of Fictional Form.

'The essays, which are substantially footnoted and usefully cross-referenced, are of a consistently high standard. Cook, Seager and their contributors are to be commended for helping to shape the field as well as extending it through this significant new body of research.' Shaun Regan, The Review of English Studies '... The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction succeeds precisely because 'afterlife' is a term practical and versatile enough to unite a range of learned and engaging case studies. Whether or not 'afterlife' supplants related words such as 'adaptation', 'reception', 'intertextuality', or plain old 'literary history', this volume stands as a valuable reminder of the cultural fecundity of eighteenth-century fiction and of the fascinating range of things that can happen to texts.' Jacob Sider Jost, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 'By showing how a multiplicity of genres proliferated and intermingled with one another, The Afterlives of Eighteenth-Century Fiction interrogates the rise-of-the-novel tradition and challenges considerations of the eighteenth century as a time preoccupied with definitions of originality. This wide-ranging collection will be useful for beginning and established scholars of the long eighteenth century. Moreover, the case studies contained within its pages, touching on nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first century remixes of eighteenth-century texts, demonstrate that the expansive eighteenth-century canon is adapted continually in works of literature and on stage and screen.' Jill Kirsten Anderson, Papers on Language and Literature '... a timely, accessible and engaging study of adaptations, remediations, reappropriations and other reinterpretations of eighteenth-century novels. As a result, it is of interest to scholars in literary and adaptation studies alike.' Ana Daniela Coelho, English Studies