The Conversational Circle: Re-reading the English Novel, 1740–1775 by Betty A. Schellenberg (review)

214 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 baronet, the son of Sir John Clavering, took sick in London in March 1726, he refused an enema until his uncle promised to buy him Robinson Crusoe. He died in MaYi age eighteen. Perhaps this is what Pat Rogers considers the book's 'subterranean appeal.' Two final notes: Blewett's usefulbibliography overlooks Otto Benesch, Artistic and Intellectual Trends from Rubens to Daumier As Shown in Book Illustration (1943), intelligent not only for its incisivehistorical survey but for the quick butbrilliant chapter 'Reality and Fiction in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.' Footnote 4 in chapter 3 has been lost, and the second illustration numbered 52 should be 53. (MANUEL SCHONHORN) . Betty A. Schellenberg. The Conversational Circle: Re-reading the English Novel, 1740-1775 University Press of Kentucky. viii, 166. us $34.95 The story of the rise of the noveL whether told by Ian Watt, Mikhail Bakhtin, or Michael McKeon, has been the story of the development of the novel of the individual in conflict with society. As Betty Schellenberg argues in The Conversational Circle: Re-reading the English Novel, 1740-1775, this has led to the glorification of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Tobias Smollett's Roderick Random, and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones at the expense not so much oflesser novels as ofnovels which model/the intimate and exclusive conversational circle as both a paradigm for and a means toward social consensus.' These fictions of the domestic conversational circle that flourished in the mid-eighteenth century defined in Schellenberg's title are treated by Schellenberg not as failures to achieve novelistic plot, but as alternatives to the main (or rather, ultimately dominant) line of fiction. They are generally characterized by their lack of linear plotting, lack of a strong central voice (though there are exceptions to this), and their emphasis on consensus rather than conflict. 'Even at the level of setting and imagery/ Schellenberg demonstrates throughout, 'adventure or courtship 'is replaced by settled life, motion by fixity, linear temporality by circular repetition, the closet by the tea table.' Thus these novels embody 'a socially conservative - in other words, an anti-individualistic, anti-conflictual- ideology.' Schellenberg traces a plot, though not quite a chronological one, in whlch the conversational circle, realizing the ideals constructed by the Spectator among others, is held up, in different ways, in Sarah Fielding's David Simple, and Richardson's Pamela part 2 and Sir Charles Grandison, depending on the exclusion of conflict and on social isolation. It is then complicated in Henry Fielding's Amelia, Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall, and Smollett's Humphry Clinker, in which it cannot replicate itself, becoming non-expandable or sterile. Sarah Fielding's sequel to David Simple, Volume HUMANITIES 215 the Last, demonstrated, in 1753, the dependence of the domestic circle on larger systems of economic exchange - and its subsequent collapse. The achievement ofthis smallvolume is considerable. Inclear language, unladen withjargon but not sacrificing sophistication of thought, Schellenberg convincingly describes not isolated, flawed works, but a significant group of fictions that represented one of the ways that the novel could have developed. I particularly enjoyed seeing a strong defence of a personal favourite, Sir Charles Grandison, now sadly out of print once again. The faults of this study are those of omission. Readers familiar onlywith the main line of eighteenth-century fiction, who must certainly be among the book's ideal readership, would probably appreciate outlines of some of the least known of the novels discussed. I also wanted more analysis at some points, such as the relationship between Sarah Fielding's life, her status as author, and David Simple, a subject broached but not pursued at the end of chapter 2. At the end of the book, I felt that Schellenberg could have more fully explained the decline and fall of the novel of the domestic circle, particularly as her own structure suggests such a linear plotting. Finally, the book retains more of the dissertation than one might have liked. The chapters are jOined at the ends and, as I have suggested, have an element of plot to them; however, a greater sense of unity, and further interesting analysis...