New Contexts for Eighteenth-Century British Fiction

'Hearts Resolved and Hands Prepared'

Christopher D. Johnson

• Publisher: University of Delaware Press
• Year: 2011
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781611490411
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

New Contexts for Eighteenth-Century British Fiction is a collection of thirteen essays honoring Professor Jerry C. Beasley, who retired from the University of Delaware in 2005. The essays, written by friends, collaborators and former students, reflect the scholarly interests that defined Professor Beasley's career and point to new directions of critical inquiry. The initial essays, which discuss Tobias Smollett, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, and Samuel Richardson, suggest new directions in biographical writing, including the intriguing discourse of "life writing" explored by Paula Backscheider. Subsequent essays enrich understandings of eighteenth-century fiction by examining lesser-known works by Jane Barker, Eliza Haywood, and Charlotte Lennox. Many of the essays, especially those that focus on Smollett, use political pamphlets, material artifacts, and urban legends to place familiar novels in new contexts. The collection's final essay demonstrates the vital importance of bibliographic study.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• The “Super” Jerry C. Beasley
• Tobias Smollett: The Life of an Author
• Elizabeth Singer Rowe: Lifestyle as Legacy
• The Headwaters of Ooziness (Richardson the Polemicist)
• Cleland’s Gospel of “Extasy”
• Transcultural Adoption in the Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Novel: Questioning National Identities in Charlotte Lennox’s Euphemia
• Jane Barker’s Exilius: Politics, Women, Narration, and the Public
• Eliza Haywood’s Love in Excess and the Personal Politics of Collectivity
• A Brief Note on Haywood Scholarship: or, The Fatal Enquiry into the Timely Discovery and Fruitful Enquiry into the Fatal Fondness of Contemporary Scholars for Eliza Haywood
• Revising the Scottish Plot in Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random
• Rescuing Narcissa: Monstrous Vision, Imagination, and Redemption in Roderick Random
• Smollett, the Picaresque, and Two Medical Satires
• The Publication and Revision of Smollett’s Continuation of the Complete History of England, 1760–1771
• Appendix
• Select Bibliography of Works by Jerry C. Beasley
• About the Contributors