New Contexts for Eighteenth-Century British Fiction

'Hearts Resolved and Hands Prepared'

By (author) Christopher D. Johnson Contributions by Paula R. Backscheider, O M Brack, Leslie A. Chilton, Robert A. Erikson, Susan K. Howard, Marta Kvande, James E. May, Melissa Mowry, Alexander Pettit, Charles E. Robinson, Mary Anne Schofield, Rivka Swenson

Publication date:

18 April 2011

Length of book:

384 pages

Publisher

University of Delaware Press

ISBN-13: 9781611490404

New Contexts for Eighteenth-Century British Fiction is a collection of thirteen essays honoring Professor Jerry C. Beasley, who retired from the University of Delaware in 2005. The essays, written by friends, collaborators and former students, reflect the scholarly interests that defined Professor Beasley's career and point to new directions of critical inquiry. The initial essays, which discuss Tobias Smollett, Elizabeth Singer Rowe, and Samuel Richardson, suggest new directions in biographical writing, including the intriguing discourse of "life writing" explored by Paula Backscheider. Subsequent essays enrich understandings of eighteenth-century fiction by examining lesser-known works by Jane Barker, Eliza Haywood, and Charlotte Lennox. Many of the essays, especially those that focus on Smollett, use political pamphlets, material artifacts, and urban legends to place familiar novels in new contexts. The collection's final essay demonstrates the vital importance of bibliographic study.

1 Introduction
2 The "Super" Jerry C. Beasley
3 Tobias Smollet: The Life of an Author
4 Elizabeth Singer Rowe: Lifestyle as Legacy
5 The Headwaters of Ooziness (Richardson the Polemicist)
6 Cleland's Gospel of "Extasy"
7 Transcultural Adoption in the Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Novel: Questioning National Identities in Charlotte Lennox's Euphemia
8 Jane Baker's Exilius: Politics, Women, Narration, and the Public
9 Eliza Haywood's Love in ExcessI and the Personal Politics of Collectivity
10 A Brief Note on Haywood Scholarship: Or, The Fatal Enquiry into the Timely Discovery and Fruitful Enquiry into the Fatal Fondness of Contemporary Scholars for Eliza Haywood
11 Revising the Scottish Plot in Tobias Smollet's Roderick Random
12 Rescuing Narcissa: Montrous Vision, Immagination, and Redemption in Roderick Random
13 Smollett, the Picaresquem and Two Medical Satires
14 The Publication and Revision of Smollet's Continuation of the Complete History of Englans, 1760-61
15 Appendix: A Descriptive Bibliography with Collation of Varient Readings for the Life-Time Editions of Smollet's Continuation
16 Select Bibliography of Works by Jerry C. Beasley
17 Contributors
18 Index

This festschrift was well conceived to honor Jerry Beasley and is a valuable collection of studies offering “New Contexts for Eighteenth-Century British Fiction.” Both ends are related, of course: Johnson wisely selected contributors, but they took the invitation as an honor and put forth their best material and effort to raise a monument to their teacher and colleague. Most of the critical essays set forth and apply a productive context, and in many cases the explications develop that context or initiate another. The volume is of particular value to those working on women authors, particularly Haywood, and those working on Smollett. The volume has been well proofread by the editor and produced by the press.