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  • Elizabeth Rowe and the Development of the English Novel by Paula Backscheider
  • Lori Davis Perry (bio)
Elizabeth Rowe and the Development of the English Novel by Paula Backscheider Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. xvi+ 304. US$50. ISBN 978-1-4214-0842-2.

In Elizabeth Rowe and the Development of the English Novel, Paula Backscheider proposes to make visible for modern critics and literary historians an eighteenth-century authorial presence so ubiquitous in the development of the novel that it has become all but invisible to present-day readers. She argues that Elizabeth Rowe exerted a pivotal influence on fiction as the tired novelistic forms of the 1720s transitioned to the intellectually mature and increasingly respectable novels of the 1740s and beyond. Backscheider’s study traces a variety of ways in which Rowe altered the history of the novel, including her experimentation with epistolary form; her sensitivity to a wide range of reading practices and literary models; the elegant register she invented for fictional forms; her moderate balance of faith and reason; her construction of an authorial stance and perspective that created a new concept of female authorial control; her adaptation of the politeness movement as a site of feminine resistance to patriarchal hegemony; her conception of the feminine self as internal and fully realized; and her development of a technology of the self that emphasized gendered self-mastery in lieu of the resignation, submission, or stoicism most often set out as the narrative solutions to women’s lives in early novels. In short, Backscheider creates a compelling argument for Rowe’s central position in the development of the English novel.

Rowe’s individual importance as a writer has been overshadowed by the critical reception of early women writers who more directly appeal to modern scholars, although many of these women were deeply indebted to Rowe as a personal and professional role model. Few eighteenthcentury [End Page 192] writers could boast Rowe’s publication history, and her epistolary fiction outsold Robinson Crusoe for more than 125 years. While Rowe was widely respected by some of the greatest poets of the eighteenth century, Backscheider focuses primarily on the impact Rowe had on women writers who were engaged in the enterprise of fiction, for through these disciples some of the most important developments in the novel took place. Backscheider argues that, during the dry period of English novels in the 1730s, Rowe played a critical role in revitalizing the form by “creating characters who were seeking a harmonious, contented life, often in the face of considerable social pressure,” a “plotline and quest” (3) that we see as becoming conventionalized in the novels of the 1740s. In addition to creating a version of the good life in fiction, Rowe modelled such a desired state for women writers of the period. As Backscheider points out, for other women writers and intellectuals, Rowe sets an important example as “a poet, an intellect, and a virtuous, happy human being” (183).

Backscheider possesses a broad and intimate familiarity with eighteenth-century literature, marshalling a wide range of novels, poems, epistolary collections, amatory fiction, literary fairy tales, miscellanies, biographies, diaries, portraits, engravings, historical commentary, travel memoir, opera, and even tombstones to illustrate her points. As a literary historian, she is also alert to the generic shifts occurring in fiction, including generally unrecognized forms such as patchworks and apparition literature. By ignoring traditional formulations of authors as “virtuous” or “rebellious,” Backscheider can more fruitfully explore the literary relationships between figures such as Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, Delarivier Manley, Samuel Richardson, and Rowe. Her thoughtful comparisons of literary publications before and after Rowe’s epistolary fiction offer strong evidence in support of her argument that Rowe not only engaged in experimental literary conversation with a wide variety of writers, but that she also altered the tone, style, and purpose of the conversations altogether, thereby laying the groundwork for mid-century experimentation in the novel.

Backscheider is equally comfortable with the subtleties of eighteenth-century religious, political, and critical controversies; emerging concepts of nature and landscape practices; medical theories relating to women’s health; the commercial realities of the publishing industry; unsettling military excursions such as the Irish...

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