Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Rise of the Novel Reconsidered begins with the brute fact that poetry jostled up alongside novels in the bookstalls of eighteenth-century England. Indeed, by exploring unexpected collisions and collusions between poetry and novels, this volume of exciting, new essays offers a reconsideration of the literary and cultural history of the period. The novel poached from and featured poetry, and the "modern" subjects and objects privileged by "rise of the novel" scholarship are only one part of a world full of animate things and people with indistinct boundaries. Contributors: Margaret Doody, David Fairer, Sophie Gee, Heather Keenleyside, Shelley King, Christina Lupton, Kate Parker, Natalie Phillips, Aran Ruth, Wolfram Schmidgen, Joshua Swidzinski, and Courtney Weiss Smith.

‘I cannot be patient, I cannot be passive, when my virtue is in danger’

Fifteen-year-old Pamela Andrews, alone and unprotected, is relentlessly pursued by her dead mistress’s son. Although she is attracted to young Mr B., she holds out against his demands and threats of abduction and rape, determined to defend her virginity and abide by her own moral standards. Psychologically acute in its investigations of sex, freedom and power, Richardson’s first novel caused a sensation when it was first published, with its depiction of a servant heroine who dares to assert herself. Richly comic and full of lively scenes and descriptions, Pamela contains a diverse cast of characters, ranging from the vulgar and malevolent Mrs Jewkes to the aggressive but awkward country squire who serves this unusual love story as both its villain and its hero.

This edition incorporates all the revisions made by Richardson in his lifetime. Margaret A. Doody’s introduction discusses the genre of epistolary novels, and examines characterization, the role of women and class differences in Pamela.

Written in secret, the manuscript copied for her publisher in disguised handwriting, Fanny Burney’s first novel Evelina appeared anonymously in 1778.

It was a sequel to Caroline Evelyn, the novel burned by its author when she was fifteen; Evelina, the apparently illegitimate daughter of the vanished Caroline, happily enters a society much more dangerous than she realizes. Subtitled The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World the novel records in letters its young heroine’s encounters with society, both high and low, in London and at fashionable watering places.

The novel explores representation and performance, social mores and masks, in a world full of distractions, from overturned coaches to golden automata, from opera to malevolent monkeys. Evelina is also a ‘family romance’, and, as Margaret Anne Doody’s Introduction indicates, it is acutely observant of the social laws regarding power, authority and authorship, which the author herself had to subvert, at least in part, like her naïve letter-writing heroine.