British Historical Fiction before Scott. Anne H. Stevens.

Abstract

Anne H. Stevens, British Historical Fiction before Scott (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) xi + 201 $84.00 Anne H. Stevens' British Historical Fiction before Scott traces late 18th and early 19th origins of novel subgenre is often assumed begin with Walter Scott. Examining eighty-five historical fictions written in fifty-two years prior publication of Waverley (1814)--some familiar enough students of era, but many not--Stevens demonstrates that Scott's celebrated historical novel emerges from period of novelistic experimentation with fiction and history. Thus British Historical Fiction before Scott is aligned with work of critics such as Peter Garside, Rainer Schowerling, Katie Trumpener, Ina Ferris, and James Buzard, who all variously challenge Georg Lukacs's statement in The Historical Novel (1937) that long list of second and third-rate writers who produced historical fiction before Scott are not worthy of serious investigation. Studying early historical fiction alongside emerging institutions into which it was received, Stevens argues that novelists, reviewers, publishers, circulating libraries, and readers collectively worked to codify genre of historical novel by first decades of nineteenth century (2). The theoretical basis for this argument is provided by work of figures such as film theorist Rick Altman, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and literary critic Franco Moretti. Drawing on this diverse body of work, Stevens situates her corpus of early historical fiction within literary marketplace she defines as a place of competition, antagonism, and rivalries [...]. Combatants take their positions on field in relation actors already present. For new literary genre or movement enter field, it must clear space for itself [...], asserting its newness and distinction from already-existing genres or movements (26). Consequently, for Stevens, emergence of historical fiction corresponds Altman's theory of generic cycles or what he calls 'the Producer's Game' (21): early experiments breed imitators, some of whom achieve popular success by variously following and/or modifying conventions established by earlier experiments and making innovations of their own, and whose works are then imitated and innovated upon in turn. As those experiments variously succeed or fail in literary marketplace, process of genrification (49) occurs: authors imitate those experiments that win favor of reviewers, publishers, and readers, failed experiments are relegated obscurity, and conventions of genre begin stabilize. Moving from earliest practitioners of historical fiction (Thomas Leland, Horace Walpole, William Hutchinson, Clara Reeve, and Sophia Lee), imitators they inspired, and finally literary bodies that published, reviewed, circulated, and consumed that fiction, British Historical Fiction before Scott effectively uses theory of the Producer's Game illustrate process whereby historical fiction coalesces into genre during half-century prior Scott. The virtues of British Historical Fiction before Scott are many. The prose is lucid and eminently readable, volume carefully edited, and argument clearly structured. The research--which includes careful study of eighty-five novels and forty-two circulating library catalogues, findings of which are summarized in series of useful tables--is impressive and, as result, argument well supported. The attention lesser-known novels and novelists provides much-needed service scholarship on late 18th and Romantic-era novel, and inclusion of such neglected figures and texts alongside their more canonical counterparts makes for rich, complex reading of literary landscape. The chapters zoom in and out dramatically examine micro- and macro-dynamics of historical phenomenon they trace, providing, on one hand, close considerations of novels such as Leland's Longsword (1762), Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1764/65), Hutchinson's The Hermitage (1772), Reeve's The Old English Baron (1777/78), Lee's The Recess (1783, 1785), and Scott's Ivanhoe (1819) in chapters 2 and 6, and, on other hand, offering panoramic surveys of historical fiction in circulating library, after success of The Recess, and among reviews in chapters 3, 4, and 5, respectively. …