As Jane Spencer, and many other novel historians, note “Eighteenth-century England witnessed two remarkable and inter-connected literary events: the emergence of the novel and the establishment of the professional woman writer” (viii). Using excerpts from Spencer’s The Rise of the Woman Novelist as our critical starting point, we will trace the novel’s development as a dominant and respectable literary form in the eighteenth century. We will also pay close attention to the way authors speak to one another through literature. How do our authors revise, critique, or continue one another’s novel projects? Is it possible to delineate distinctly masculine and feminine novel histories? Or, are the projects of male and female novel authors intimately intertwined?

Our primary emphasis will be on close readings of each text, but we will also supplement our discussion with presentations on eighteenth-century literary history and culture and very brief critical excerpts from Jane Spencer and Ian Watt.

Primary Texts:

Aphra Behn, The History of the Nun
Eliza Haywood, The British Recluse
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
Samuel Richardson, Pamela
Henry Fielding, Shamela and Joseph Andrews
Frances Burney, Evelina
Jane Austen, Persuasion