Conversion and reform in the British novel of the 1790s
Subtitle: a revolution of opinions
By: A. A. Markley.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 278
Subjects: English fiction -- 18th century -- History and criticism; Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; Social problems in literature; Social movements in literature
Description: Dramatically expanding the boundaries of the British Jacobin novel, Conversion and Reform in the British Novel in the 1790s analyzes the works of a wide range of British reformists writing in the 1790s, including William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and Maria Edgeworth, who reshaped the conventions of contemporary fiction to position the novel as a progressive political tool. Rather than aiming to launch a bloody revolution, these authors worked to initiate social and political reform in such areas as women's rights, abolition, the Jewish question, and the leveling of the class system in Britain by converting the individual reader, one reader at a time.