Anti-Jacobin Fiction and the Eighteenth-Century Traditions of the Novel: Robert Bisset, Isaac D’Israeli, and the Novel’s Reclamation

Abstract

This paper argues that Robert Bisset’s and Isaac D’Israeli’s fictions engage in a critical appraisal of the novel, constructing a canon committed to the “real” and the “factual.” This framing of the genre allows Bisset and D’Israeli to enlist the novel, so defined, as an ally of British order. Their efforts reveal the surprisingly inclusive nature of the anti-Jacobin canon and its overriding concern with questions of representation rather than morality; they also anticipate significant developments in early nineteenth-century British literary culture, including Henry Fielding’s ascendancy over Samuel Richardson and the emergence of the discourse that facilitated the novel’s legitimatization.