Giving Power to the Medium: Recovering the 1750s

The fiction of the 1750s has two characteristics: a high degree of reflexivity about the practices of reading and writing, and a foregrounding of material objects, including paper and print. This article argues that both forms of self-reference are used to underscore the inability of a reader to intervene in an openly fictional world. This connects the themes of the novels and shorter narratives from this time, as well as connecting them to a vein of entertainment that carries on today.