Mobility in the English Novel from Defoe to Austen

The arrival of the novel in eighteenth-century Britain coincided with the transport revolution, which transformed the landscape and the way people experienced it. Chris Ewers argues that this reconfiguration of local geography and the new experience of moving through space at speed had a profound effect on the narrative and form of the novel, leaving its mark on genre, prose technique, the depiction of class and gender relations, and the way texts are structured.

Format: Hardback
Length: 233 pages
Publication date: 13 March 2018
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

The arrival of the novel, a literary form that uses life-as-a-journey as its master trope, coincided with a significant transport revolution in eighteenth-century Britain. In 1700, the fastest coach from London to Manchester took five days. However, by 1790, the development of the turnpike road system across England had reduced this figure to twenty-seven hours, profoundly transforming the landscape and the ways in which people experienced it.

This revolution in transport came at the same time as the emergence of the novel as a dominant literary form in Britain. In this original reading of some of the major novelists of the long eighteenth century, including Defoe, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Austen, Chris Ewers explores how these two developments interacted. He argues that this reconfiguration of local geography and the new experience of moving through space at speed had a profound effect upon the narrative and form of the novel, leaving its mark on genre, prose technique, the depiction of class and gender relations, and the way texts are structured.

Ewers concludes that it is no accident that the arrival of the novel, the literary form that uses life-as-a-journey as a master trope, is roughly co-terminous with the revolution of internal transport in Britain. This study offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between literature and the social and technological changes of the eighteenth century, shedding light on the ways in which the novel responded to and influenced the changing world around it.

Weight: 574g
Dimension: 162 x 240 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781783272969