This is the story of a most ingenious invention: the novel. Desribed for the first time in The Rise of The Novel, Ian Watt's landmark classic reveals the origins and explains the success of the most popular literary form of all time. In the space of a single generation, three eighteenth-century writers -- Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding -- invented an entirely new genre of writing: the novel. With penetrating and original readings of their works, as well as those of Jane Austen, who further developed and popularised it, he explains why these authors wrote in the way that they did, and how the complex changes in society – the emergence of the middle-class and the new social position of women – gave rise to its success. Heralded as a revelation when it first appeared, The Rise of The Novel remains one of the most widely read and enjoyable books of literary criticism ever written, capturing precisely and satisfyingly what it is about the form that so enthrals us.

Srinivas Aravamudan here reveals how Oriental tales, pseudo-ethnographies, sexual fantasies, and political satires took Europe by storm during the eighteenth century. Naming this body of fiction Enlightenment Orientalism, he poses a range of urgent questions that uncovers the interdependence of Oriental tales and domestic fiction, thereby challenging standard scholarly narratives about the rise of the novel. More than mere exoticism, Oriental tales fascinated ordinary readers as well as intellectuals, taking the fancy of philosophers such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Diderot in France, and writers such as Defoe, Swift, and Goldsmith in Britain. Aravamudan shows that Enlightenment Orientalism was a significant movement that criticized irrational European practices even while sympathetically bridging differences among civilizations. A sophisticated reinterpretation of the history of the novel, Enlightenment Orientalism is sure to be welcomed as a landmark work in eighteenth-century studies.

The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel, first published in 2000, brings together two traditionally antagonistic fields, book history and narrative theory, to challenge established theories of 'the rise of the novel'. Leah Price shows that far from leveling class or gender distinctions, as has long been claimed, the novel has consistently located them within its own audience. Shedding new light on Richardson and Radcliffe, Scott and George Eliot, this book asks why the epistolary novel disappeared, how the book review emerged, why eighteenth-century abridgers designed their books for women while Victorian publishers marketed them to men, and how editors' reproduction of old texts has shaped authors' production of new ones. This innovative study will change the way we think not just about the history of reading, but about the genealogy of the canon wars, the future of intellectual property, and the role that anthologies play in our own classrooms.

In this challening book, Firdous Azim, provides a feminist critique of orthodox accounts of the `rise of the novel' and exposes the underlying orientalist assumptions of the early English novel. Whereas previous studies have emphasized the universality of the coherent and consistent subject which found expression in the novels of the eighteenth century, Azim demonstrtes how certain categories: women and people of colour, were silenced and excluded. The Colonial Rise of the Novel makes an important and provocative contribution to post-colonial and feminist criticism. It will be essential reading for all teachers and students of English literature, women's studies, and post-colonial criticism.

McKeon and others delve into the significance of the novel as a genre form, issues in novel techniques such as displacement, the grand theory, narrative modes such as subjectivity, character, and development, critical interpretation of the structure of the novel, and the novel in historical context.

This guide explores the dominant methodologies, theories and debates surrounding the emergence of the novel during the 18th-century. Covering key criticism on authors such as Defoe, Fielding, Richardson and Austen, the emphasis is on how critical work is interrelated, allowing readers to discern trends in the critical conversation.

Martin Turnell's The Rise of the French Novel is a successor to his highly praised earlier books, The Novel in France (1951) and The Art of French Fiction (1959). His aim now, however, is somewhat different, as can be seen from the title. It is well known that the reputations of many writers, novelists especially, diminish for a period following their deaths. Although in the eighteenth century Marivaux, Crébillon fils, and Rousseau all enjoyed a great deal of popularity during their lifetimes, it is only recently that they have been subject to truly searching studies. Yet they remain little read in English-speaking countries. Turnell emphasizes that in spite of the hostility of French critics and the fact that the novel did not reach its supremacy even in France until the nineteenth century, the beginning of its great rise was indeed with such writers as these. Their strong influence led such nineteenth-century novelists as Stendhal and Flaubert to all kinds of changes related to style, the enormous increase in the range of subject matter, and the marked development of language. Flaubert is the most striking example. It was pointed out some time ago by Eisenstein that Madame Bovary anticipates cinematic technique. One of Turnell's most interesting chapters explores the connections between the novel and film in general, and Madame Bovary in particular. In our own time, two of the most popular French novelists in both the United States and England are Alain-Fournier and Radiguet. They are given enthusiastic appreciations in Turnell's thoughtful book.

Eighteenth-Century Poetry and the Rise of the Novel Reconsidered beginswith the brute fact that poetry jostledup alongside novels in the bookstallsof eighteenth-century England. Indeed,by exploringunexpected collisions and collusionsbetween poetry and novels, this volumeof exciting, new essays offers a reconsideration of the literary and cultural history of the period. Thenovel 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, ShelleyKing, Christina Lupton, Kate Parker, Natalie Phillips, Aran Ruth, Wolfram Schmidgen, Joshua Swidzinski, and Courtney Weiss Smith.

The novel was born religious, alongside Protestant texts produced in the same format by the same publishers. Novels borrowed features of these texts but over the years distinguished themselves, becoming the genre we know today. Jordan Alexander Stein traces this history, showing how the physical object of the book shaped the stories it contained.

In this volume, Ian Watt examines the myths of Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan and Robinson Crusoe, as the distinctive products of modern society. He traces the way the original versions of Faust, Don Quixote and Don Juan - all written within a forty-year period during the Counter Reformation - presented unflattering portrayals of the three figures, while the Romantic period two centuries later recreated them as admirable and even heroic. The twentieth century retained their prestige as mythical figures, but with a new note of criticism. Robinson Crusoe came much later than the other three, but his fate can be seen as representative of the new religious, economic and social attitudes which succeeded the Counter-Reformation. The four figures help to reveal problems of individualism in the modern period: solitude, narcissism, and the claims of the self versus the claims of society. They all pursue their own view of what they should be, raising strong questions about their heroes' character and the societies whose ideals they reflect.