The Anti-Jacobin Novel: British Conservatism and the French Revolution

by M. O. Grenby

Overview

The French Revolution sparked an ideological debate that brought Britain to the brink of its own revolution in the 1790s. As radicals turned to the writing of "Jacobin" fiction, the fear of rebellion prompted conservatives to write novels. This is the first book to examine the extent and variety of Anti-Jacobin fiction. As well as identifying an unprecedented number of these novels and considering what they contain, M.O. Grenby investigates why they were written, especially by women, and why they proved to be so popular.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521803519
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/06/2001
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Romanticism , #48
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.83(d)
Lexile:	1780L (what's this?)

About the Author

M. O Grenby is Hockliffe Research Fellow in the English Department at De Montfort University. He has written for a number of scholarly journals, and is a regular contributor to History: the Journal of the Historical Association. This is his first book.

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Novels reproved and reprieved; 2. Representing revolution; 3. The new philosophy; 4. The Vaurien and the hierarchy of Jacobinism; 5. Levellers, Nabobs and the manners of the great: the novel's defense of hierarchy; 6. The creation of orthodoxy: constructing the anti-Jacobin novel; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Grenby has performed a valuable service in investigating and summarizing a great deal of resourcefully discovered reading ... The Anti-Jacobin Novel is essential reading for students of fiction in the age of Revolution and for anyone concerned with the complex history of the British novel." Albion

"Grenby's historical and textual research and analysis make The Anti-Jacobin Novel a valuable and necessary book. The study makes available to reasearchers a much more compreshensive body of material than has previously been identified, and the close readings of novels are acute and relevant. Grenby demonstrates an intimate knowledge of the culture—poitical, social, and literary—in which these texts were produced, and his exclusive and detailed attention to anti-Jacobin novels as a coherent body of work will help scholars of eighteenth-century fiction towards a clearer understanding of a period during which conservative social and political thought became hegemonic."

From the Publisher