Contemporary European Fiction Available in Restoration England

Abstract

:This essay examines several types of book catalogues in Restoration England for evidence of European fiction for sale. While scholars have often argued for the influence of French and Spanish fiction on English fiction of the same period, little attention has been paid to what works were available, and in what ways they could be accessed. The evidence surveyed in this essay shows that few works of fiction were available in their original languages and those few that were tended to be older and longer than contemporary fiction. Most English readers, even those who were multilingual, would have accessed contemporary European fiction primarily through translations. The difficulty of determining what was a translation and what was original was part of the blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction that characterized Restoration prose. This essay concludes by suggesting that greater attention should be paid to translated fictions from this period as works of literature in their own right.