Peter Wilkins and the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Long after the publication of Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (1957), scholars have yet to account fully for the vast amount of eighteenth-century fiction that is not formally realistic. Imaginary voyages, in particular, continue to be neglected. This article focuses on one such text: Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1750). Although it defies easy reference to life in contemporaneous England, Peter Wilkins nevertheless raises a number of fascinating issues that are actually typical of the period's more realistic fiction. I argue for a more flexible and comparative understanding of fictional genres and for more scholarly attention to Peter Wilkins in histories of the eighteenthcentury novel.