Popular Fiction before Richardson: Narrative Patterns 1700-1739

Richetti, John J.

ISBN 10: 0198116810 / ISBN 13: 9780198116813

Published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, England, 1969

About this Item

Ex-library w/usual stamps & stickers. Pages clean; binding tight; minor wear to covers; lacks a dustjacket. 274 pages. Size: 5 1/2" x 8 1/2".

Seller Inventory # S251-057010

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Popular Fiction before Richardson: Narrative Patterns 1700-1739
• Publisher: Clarendon Press, Oxford, England
• Publication Date: 1969
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198116810
• ISBN 13: 9780198116813
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

Now a standard work on the subject, Popular Fiction before Richardson surveys the largely forgotten fiction from the first forty years of the eighteenth century. Issued for the first time in paperback with a new introduction by the author, this is a study of those narratives which were writtenand widely read in England, but which have been previously neglected by historians of the novel. Richetti makes no claims for these works as literary achievements--they are seen, rather, as vigorous and highly successful commercial exploitations of enduring stereotypes such as the criminal, thetraveller-merchant, the persecuted maiden, and the aristocratic seducer. Setting them against the background of the age, the book accounts for the attractiveness of such figures and their characteristic adventures, and evaluates the importance of these narratives in providing a set of conventionaland meaningful characters and situations for the mid eighteenth-century masters of the novel such as Richardson and Fielding.

Review

`a real book, a good book. He is thoughtful and he makes you think. He sees the inherent triviality of his material, but sees in this a far from trivial question, "What is the use of bad art?" To raise the question at all is to give the book substance. It tells us that the material is going to be handled intelligently.' Review of English Studies `excellent and intelligent book' Times Literary Supplement