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THE POPULAR NOVEL IN ENGLAND 1770-1800 THE POPULAR NOVEL IN ENGLAND 1770-1800 J. M. S. TOMPKINS “Books are atrocious. . . . They are in general so much above or below life, that either way one can expect no truth” (Courtney Melmoth, Shenstone-Green, 1799.) METHUEN & CO LTD II NEW FETTER LANE, LONDON E.C.4 First published in IQ 32 by Constable & Company Ltd, London First published by Methuen & Co. Ltd in iq6i Reprinted in ig6g 1.2 SBN 416 23010 6 First published as a University Paperback in iq6q 1.1 SBN 416 23800 o Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Fakenham, Norfolk This title is available as both a hardback and as a paperback edition. The paperback edition is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or other¬ wise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in ivhich it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. PREFACE A book devoted to the display of tenth-rate fiction stands in need of justification. This one has been written in answer to the question : What sort of novels were read between 177° and 1800 ? What interests, tastes and principles do they reflect ? What types do they exhibit ? The novel has been approached rather as a popular amusement than a literary form, though I have made notes of formal developments and literary relationships, when these presented themselves. Between the work of the four great novelists of the mid-eighteenth century and that of Jane Austen and Scott there are no names which posterity has consented to call great, but there is a large body of fiction which fed the appetite of the read¬ ing public, reflected and shaped their imaginations, and sometimes broke out into experiment and creative adventure. In this tract a generation of readers took their pleasure, and it is the conditions of this pleasure that I have tried to make out. In such an inquiry strictness of definition would be out of place. “ Novel ” was a comprehensive word in 1770, and I have used it in its widest sense. Nor is it so important for the inquirer to classify his specimens according to their literary qualities as to keep fresh his sympathy with imperfect expressions of imaginative life. Dead books can provide little information when exposed on the gibbet of scorn. Therefore I have treated this inferior fiction with perhaps over-scrupulous gentleness and consigned its most ludicrous manifestations to notes ; for these are not good books, whose vitality springs from v 248335 VI PREFACE an inner source, but poor books, on which the colour of life was reflected from their readers, and must now be renewed by imaginative sympathy. In the following pages, even such a moderate talent as Fanny Burney’s makes few appearances, whereas Samuel Jackson Pratt, whose wares have proved entirely perishable, makes many. There is little said of Beckford and much of pedestrian melodrama and crude romance, little of Jane Austen (who wrote, though she did not publish, within the period) and much of her forgotten predecessors, the leaf-mould in which that exquisite and thriving plant was rooted. These spirits would have been too strong for my book, if I had suffered them to intrude with all their immortality about them. Such appearances as their books make are resumptions of the humbler part they once played, indiscriminately mingled on a reviewer’s table with the productions of the Minerva Press. I have read nearly all the novels to which I refer; where I have relied on the accounts of contemporary reviewers I have tried to make this clear. I have also preserved in extracts the original punctuation. During the ’seventies and ’eighties there survived in the novel a dramatic punctuation, unconnected with grammatical structure ; it directs the movement of the voice, and, while it is certainly not consistently carried out and sometimes falls into chaos, it seemed a pity to obliterate it. Attributions of anonymous books are made from the usual sources, including the British Museum Catalogue ; where I have added fresh ones (as in the case of Elizabeth Blower, Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins, and the identification of Mrs. Cox, later Mrs. Johnson, with Anna Maria Mackenzie) it has been on the authority of signed pre¬ faces, title-pages and the comments of reviewers. To deal adequately with the subject of this study—popular taste at the end of the eighteenth century—would require parallel research in contemporary drama and art and in PREFACE Vll foreign popular fiction. This I am not able to under¬ take, but I have noticed these analogues where I could. This book, which has long lain in my mind, would not have been so soon finished but for the award to me of the Amy Lady Tate scholarship by the Council of Bed¬ ford College. This has meant liberty to read and write, and for this I wish to express my thanks. I have also great pleasure in acknowledging the grants in aid of publication which I have received from the Special Research and Publication Fund of the same College and from the Publication Fund of the University of London. • V . CONTENTS CHAP. PACE PREFACE . • V I. THE NOVEL MARKET . I II. OLD PATTERNS IN THE NOVEL . • 34 III. DIDACTICISM AND SENSIBILITY . 70 IV. THE FEMALE NOVELISTS . . 116 V. NEW LIFE IN THE NOVEL . 172 VI. THE STIRRING OF ROMANCE, AND THE HIS- TORICAL NOVEL . 206 VII. THE GOTHIC ROMANCE . • 243 VIII. PHILOSOPHERS AND CHRISTIANS . 296 IX. THEORY AND TECHNIQUE • 329 APPENDICES I. FOREIGN NOVELS IN ENGLAND 367 • II. COURTNEY MELMOTH’S SENSIBILITY • 37° III. MRS. RADCLIFFE’S SOURCES • 375 IV. SPECIMENS OF THE PICTURESQUE • 378 II