The Eighteenth-Century Novel (review)

Reviews/Comptes rendus The Eighteenth-Century Novel, vol. 1, ed. Susan Spencer and Margo Collins. NewYork: AMS Press, 2001. vi+343pp. US$89.50. ISBN 0-40464651 -4. Vol. 2, ed. AlbertJ. Rivero, GeorgeJustice, and Margo Collins. NewYork: AMS Press, 2002. 429pp. US$94.50. ISBN 0404-64652-2. Vol. 3, ed. AlbertJ. Rivero, GeorgeJustice, and Margo Collins. New York: AMS Press, 2003. 324pp. US$94.50. ISBN 0-404-64653-0. TheEighteenth-Century NoveL a new publication dedicated to the prose fiction ofthe "long" eighteenth century, is proof, as AlbertJ. Rivero's editorial foreword to the first volume suggests, that the exploration ofdie eighteenth-century novel is a flourishing field. The first three annual volumes include a wide range of articles on canonical audiors such as Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Burney, and Austen, as well as less familiar figures from Mary Davys and Frances Brooke to Sophia Lee. Women writers are well represented in all three volumes, attesting to steady interest in earlywomen practitioners ofthe novel in the wake ofwork byJane Spencer, Ross Ballaster, and Catherine Gallagher. This mix ofwell-known and more obscure primary audiors conveys a sense of dynamic ongoing exploration, and is a strength ofthe publication. Each volume contains twelve to sixteen essays, in addition to book reviews. The variety of the essays means that this review will not be able to dojustice to all, but the frequent coincidence in critical approaches indicates particular areas that have come to inform criticism ofthe eighteenth-century novel. The publication explicidy invites interdisciplinarywork, and some ofthe most suggestive articles establish connections between the early novel and other fields: the history ofscience, the law, and the emerging discourse ofpolitical economy . Less familiar genres, such as the white captivity narrative and the oriental tale, are another major source ofinterest. Volume 1 begins with an essay on three early American fictional Barbary captivity narratives.Jennifer Margulis reads against the grain of their explicidy patriotic sentiments to reveal often sympathetic portrayals ofAlgerians and Islam, situating them in the context ofthe Enlightenment trope ofexotic travel as implicit critique of "home," in this case, American slavery. George Boulukos considers three plantation novels, by Edward Kimber, Sarah Scott, and Henry Mackenzie, to show that "the seeming offer offreedom to slaves on a given plantation, [is] intended not to challenge the institution of slavery, but instead to modernize management techniques and improve slaves' productivity" (1:161). Two essays apply the perspective of class. Corie Schweitzer argues against Maximillian Novak's view ofDefoe as sympathetic to the poor, by showing that Defoe's/oMmaZis coloured by a paternalistic perspective working "to the social advantage of a precarious commercial class" (1:253). Nicholas Mason, in an REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS711 essay on Belinda, argues that Edgeworth's own upper-class affinities "led to her refusal to position domesticity as an exclusively middle-class virtue" (1:282). Amy M. King's "Linnaeus's Blooms: Botany and die Novel of Courtship" follows up on recent work by Lorna Schiebinger and Alan Bewell to demonstrate the cultural currency ofa "botanical vernacular" adopted by the novel ofcourtship to index the heroine's nascent sexuality. Two more provocative approaches to canonical texts, Stuart Sim's reading of Tristram Shandy from die perspective of contemporary chaos theory and James How's analysis of Clarissa's cyberspace, are somewhat less successful. Sim's use of terms such as "the edge of chaos" (1:206) and "order for free" (1:210) to bring a fresh perspective on Shandean consciousness is suggestive, but die reader who is less familiar with physics might yearn for more than a description ofthe "butterfly effect" in order to grasp how these concepts can usefully illuminate the novel. The analogy between cyberspace and the postal system in Clarissa is less convincing, pardy because How himselfproceeds to oudine some of the two systems' substantial differences (1:45-46), widiout clinching the analogy's interpretative relevance. Two essays in volume 2 investigate the use of die Orient, responding to Nigel Leask's recent call for historicizing the popularity ofeighteenth-century eastern tales in relation to imperialism. Kevin Berland explores the motifof the oriental garden in Hawkeswortii, Sheridan,Johnson, and Beckford as a discourse ofself-critique rather than...