Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825

Whatever happened to the epistolary novel? This is an innovative account of the suppression of the principal narrative form of the eighteenth century in favour of more authoritarian, third-person models designed to underwrite a new version of British national identity in the Napoleonic period. It offers provocative political readings of authors including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, Walter Scott, Charles Maturin, Charlotte Smith, and Lord Byron.