Harold Bloom on Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Harold Bloom on Eighteenth-Century FictionPeter Sabor Since the early 1960s, publishers have provided students ofeighteenthcentury fiction with a steady stream of collections of reprinted critical essays, both on major authors and on individual works. Prentice-Hall has issued Twentieth-Century Views of Defoe, Swift, Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Austen; Routledge's Critical Heritage series contains all of these except Richardson, as well as Smollett and Walpole; the short-lived Penguin Critical Anthologies furnished only Swift and Fielding. PrenticeHall offers Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Gulliver's Travels, Pamela, Tom Jones, and Pride and Prejudice ; Macmillan has Casebooks on each of these except Pamela, and has two further volumes on Austen's novels. Norton Critical Editions, with substantial selections of essays appended to the texts, include Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Joseph Andrews with Shamela, Tom Jones, Humphry Clinker, Tristram Shandy, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. Each of these series with the exception of Norton 's has a general editor: Maynard Mack for Twentieth-Century Views and Interpretations, Brian Southam for the Critical Heritage, Christopher Ricks for the Penguin Anthologies, and A.E. Dyson for the Casebooks. Southam and Dyson have written brief prefaces for their series, but they and the other general editors have chosen specialists to introduce and edit the various volumes. These editors are, in general, recognized authorities on the author or work in question: the volumes on Fielding, for example, are edited by Ronald Paulson (Twentieth-Century Views), Martin Battestin (Twentieth-Century Interpretations), Paulson and Thomas Lockwood (Critical Heritage), Claude Rawson (Penguin Critical AntholoEIGHTEENTH -CENTURY FICTION, Volume 3, Number 2, January 1991 154 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION gies), Sheridan Baker (Norton Tom Jones), and Homer Goldberg (Norton Joseph Andrews). Each of the series serves a particular function. While Critical Heritage volumes reprint criticism primarily by an author's contemporaries and near-contemporaries, the Norton Editions, Macmillan Casebooks, and Penguin Critical Anthologies all have three-part formats: contemporary responses, the developing debate, and modern criticism. Prentice-Hall's two series, in contrast, are devoted entirely to twentieth-century critics. Few of the series have published more than a handful of volumes per year, and most have now been in progress for several decades; a certain amount ofcare has gone into their preparation. The individual volumes, of course, vary considerably in quality, but there are some outstanding successes : works in which an editor has made imaginative critical selections, and provided an informative, analytical introduction. One such collection is Rawson's Henry Fielding.* This six-hundred-page volume contains incisive introductions to each of its three sections, much material translated from French, some of it for the first time, and an annotated bibliography , guiding students to the most useful editions and critical studies of Fielding's plays, novels, and miscellaneous writings. Chelsea House's collections of essays, which began publication in 1985, thus entered a crowded field. Under the headings of "Modern Critical Views," "Modern Critical Interpretations," and 'The Critical Cosmos ," a remarkable total of some four hundred volumes has already appeared. Their closest competitors are the Twentieth-Century Views and Interpretations series; like these, they reprint only modern critical essays on the chosen authors and works. The offerings on eighteenthcentury fiction, all published between 1986 and 1988, are surprisingly similar to those of their predecessors: volumes on Defoe, Swift, Richardson , Fielding, and Austen, and on Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. The only collections without a Prentice-Hall counterpart are ones on eighteenth-century fiction, Smollett, Goldsmith, and Evelina, and the only innovative volume here is that on Burney's novel.2 Where Chelsea House is astonishing is in the role assigned to 1 Claude Rawson, ed., Henry Fielding: A Critical Anthology (Harmondswoith: Penguin, 1973). 2 Harold Bloom, ed., Modem Critical Views, Jane Austen (1986), Daniel Defoe (1987), Henry Fielding (1987), Oliver Goldsmith (1987), Samuel Richardson (1987), Tobias Smollett (1987), Jonathan Swift (1986); Modem Critical Interpretations, Jane Austen's "Emma" (1987), Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" (1987), Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"(1987), Fanny Burney's "Evelina" (1988), Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders" (1987), Daniel Defoe's"Robinson Crusoe" REVIEW ESSAY...