Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1684-1750

Novels have been a respectable component of culture for so long that it is difficult for twentieth-century observers to grasp the unease produced by novel reading in the eighteenth century. William Warner shows how the earliest novels in Britain, published in small-format print media, provoked early instances of the modern anxiety about the effects of new media on consumers.

Warner uncovers a buried and neglected history of the way in which the idea of the novel was shaped in response to a n...