The Appearance of Print in Eighteenth-Century Fiction

Abstract

Eighteenth-century fiction holds an unusual place in the history of modern print culture. The novel gained prominence largely because of advances in publishing, but, as a popular genre, it also helped shape those very developments. Authors in the period manipulated the appearance of the page and print technology more deliberately than has been supposed, prompting new forms of reception among readers. Christopher Flint's book explores works by both obscure 'scribblers' and canonical figures, such as Swift, Haywood, Defoe, Richardson, Sterne and Austen, that interrogated the complex interactions between the book's material aspects and its producers and consumers. Flint links historical shifts in how authors addressed their profession to how books were manufactured and how readers consumed texts. He argues that writers exploited typographic media to augment other crucial developments in prose fiction, from formal realism and free indirect discourse to accounts of how 'the novel' defined itself as a genre.

Women's Life Writing and Reputation: A Case Study of Mary Darby Robinson

“…At the same time that Sterne appears to censor out the immodest, however, he in fact not only draws attention to it, but implicates the reader in doing so, for the reader has to fill in the gaps. 17 It is often assumed that women did not engage in this kind of typographical play because, unlike their male counterparts, they often used intermediaries, and did not have the same direct access to the printing house or contact with the booksellers. 18 In the case of Robinson, her Memoirs was published posthumously, so she could not have wielded the direct control enjoyed by Swift, Sterne or Richardson.…”