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This volume documents the literary controversy and debate over
Samuel Richardson's novel, "Pamela", published in 1741. It brings
together and reprints key sources within the debate, including
artists such as Francis Hayman, Hubert Gravelot, Joseph Highmore
and Philip Mercer.
This volume documents the literary controversy and debate over
Samuel Richardson's novel, "Pamela", published in 1741. It brings
together and reprints key sources within the debate, including
artists such as Francis Hayman, Hubert Gravelot, Joseph Highmore
and Philip Mercer.
This volume documents the literary controversy and debate over
Samuel Richardson's novel, "Pamela", published in 1741. It brings
together and reprints key sources within the debate, including
artists such as Francis Hayman, Hubert Gravelot, Joseph Highmore
and Philip Mercer.
This volume documents the literary controversy and debate over
Samuel Richardson's novel, "Pamela", published in 1741. It brings
together and reprints key sources within the debate, including
artists such as Francis Hayman, Hubert Gravelot, Joseph Highmore
and Philip Mercer.
This volume documents the literary controversy and debate over
Samuel Richardson's novel, "Pamela", published in 1741. It brings
together and reprints key sources within the debate, including
artists such as Francis Hayman, Hubert Gravelot, Joseph Highmore
and Philip Mercer.
This volume documents the literary controversy and debate over
Samuel Richardson's novel, "Pamela", published in 1741. It brings
together and reprints key sources within the debate, including
artists such as Francis Hayman, Hubert Gravelot, Joseph Highmore
and Philip Mercer.
Jane Austen wrote six of the best-loved novels in the English
language, as well as a smaller corpus of works unpublished in her
day, including three volumes of witty, non-realist juvenilia and
the innovative, unfinished Sanditon. She pioneered new techniques
for representing voices, minds, and hearts in narrative prose, and
was a penetrating satirist of social tensions and trends in an era
dominated by the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the
socio-economic disruptions entailed by them. Yet Austen struggled
for many years to break into print, and even as she became a
published author in the last years of her relatively short life,
reading tastes and book-trade expectations constrained as much as
they enabled her literary career. This Very Short introduction
explores the major themes of Austen criticism through close
analysis of her major and minor works, with particular emphasis on
the literary, social, and political backgrounds from which the
novels emerge, and with which they engage. Thomas Keymer combines
critical introductions to each of Austen's six major novels with an
exploration of the key themes in her works, from national identity
to narrative technique. The Austen who emerges is a writer shaped
by the literary experiments and socio-political debates of the
revolution decade, drawn in her maturity to a fundamentally
conservative vision of social harmony, yet forever complicating
this vision through the disruptive ironies and satirical energies
of her prose. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series
from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost
every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to
get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine
facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make
interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Henry Fielding's picaresque tale of a young man's search for his
place in the world, The History of Tom Jones is edited with notes
and an introduction by Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely in Penguin
Classics. A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr
Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with
the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter
of the neighbouring squire - though he sometimes succumbs to the
charms of the local girls. But when his amorous escapades earn the
disapproval of his benefactor, Tom is banished to make his own
fortune. Sophia, meanwhile, is determined to avoid an arranged
marriage to Allworthy's scheming nephew and escapes from her
rambunctious father to follow Tom to London. A vivid Hogarthian
panorama of eighteenth century life, spiced with danger and
intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial
interjections, Tom Jones is one of the greatest and most ambitious
comic novels in English literature. In his introduction Thomas
Keymer discusses narrative techniques and themes, the context of
eighteenth century fiction and satire, and the historical and
political background of the Jacobite rebellion. This volume also
includes a chronology, further reading, notes, a glossary and an
appendix on Fielding's revisions. Henry Fielding (1707-1754) born
at Sharpham Park, in Somerset, was a dramatist, novelist, political
agitator and founder of London's first police force, the 'Bow
Street Runners'. As a playwright he was a thorn in the side of Sir
Robert Walpole's Whig government, who effectively legislated his
retirement from the theatre with the Licensing Act of 1737.
Undeterred, Fielding launched his career as a novelist in 1740 with
Shamela (a parody of Samuel Richardson's Pamela), followed by
Joseph Andrews (1741), an anticipation of his masterpiece, the
comic novel Tom Jones (1749). If you enjoyed The History of Tom
Jones, you might like Henry Fielding's The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, also available in Penguin Classics.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. So runs
one of the most famous opening lines in English literature. Setting
the scene in Pride and Prejudice, it deftly introduces the novel's
core themes of marriage, money, and social convention, themes that
continue to resonate with readers over 200 years later. Jane Austen
wrote six of the best-loved novels in the English language, as well
as a smaller corpus of unpublished works. Her books pioneered new
techniques for representing voices, minds, and hearts in narrative
prose, and, despite some accusations of a blinkered domestic and
romantic focus, they represent the world of their characters with
unsparing clarity. Here, Tom Keymer explores the major themes
throughout Austen's novels, setting them in the literary, social,
and political backgrounds from which they emerge, and showing how
they engage with social tensions in an era dominated by the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The Jane Austen who emerges is
a writer shaped by the literary experiments and socio-political
debates of her time, increasingly drawn to a fundamentally
conservative vision of social harmony, yet forever complicating
this vision through her disruptive ironies and satirical energy.
Sterne, Tristram, Yorick: Tercentenary Essays on Laurence Sterne
derives from the Laurence Sterne Tercentenary Conference held at
Royal Holloway, University of London, on July 8-11, 2013. It was
attended by some eighty scholars from fourteen countries; the
conference heard more than sixty papers. The organizers invited
participants to submit revised versions of their contributions for
this volume, and the thirteen selected exhibit, it is hoped, the
defining features both of the conference and of Sterne studies at
the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is worth remarking
that the selected authors represent seven countries; that Sterne
may well be the most internationally accepted of all
eighteenth-century English authors is certainly a claim worthy of a
sentimental traveler. This collection recognizes three faces of
Sterne, beginning with several biographical essays examining,
respectively, his celebrity status, family life, politics, and
philosophy. The second face is that of Tristram, studied from
vantage points provided by ethics, linguistics, gender studies, and
comparative literature. The final group of essays examines the face
of Yorick as the protagonist of A Sentimental Journey, beginning
with an ethnographic study of relationships, moving through
questions of identity, and concluding with the possible future of
literary studies-a return to aesthetics.
Written as a collection of letters in which very different accounts
of the action are unsupervised by sustained authorial comment,
Richardson's novel Clarissa offers an extreme example of the
capacity of narrative to give the reader final responsibility for
resolving or construing meaning. It is paradoxical then that its
author was a writer committed to avowedly didactic goals. Tom
Keymer counters the tendency of recent critics to suggest that
Clarissa's textual indeterminacy defeats these goals by arguing
that Richardson pursues subtler and more generous means of
educating his readers by making them 'if not Authors, Carvers' of
the text. Discussing Richardson's use of the epistolary form
throughout his career, Keymer goes on to focus in detail on the
three instalments in which Clarissa was first published, drawing on
the documented responses of its first readers to illuminate his
technique as a writer and set the novel in its contemporary
ethical, political and ideological context.
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