Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, 1690–1730 by Leah Orr

Abstract

MLR, .,   Novel Ventures: Fiction and Print Culture in England, –. By L O. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. . viii+ pp. $. ISBN ––––. In the last decade or so, there has been renewed and growing interest in the early modern book trade, and in what readers read and how they read. Already seminal texts such as Stephen Colclough’s Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities , – (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, ), which examines the diffuse genres of this period, how libraries and subscriptions impacted upon the types of books that were read, and the different reading communities that emerged during the long eighteenth century and into the Victorian period, have done much to reorient discussions from twentieth-century concerns with ‘the rise of the novel’ and canonicity. Other texts, such as Emma Depledge’s Shakespeare’s Rise to Cultural Prominence: Politics, Print and Alteration, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), have shown how the book trade played a part in shaping and forming the literary canon. Helen Smith’s Grossly Material ings: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ) is an impressive example of how close examination of the Stationers’ Register and other documents uncovers the roles women had as patrons, writers, makers, printers, readers, and users of early modern books. Such studies force us to reassess the importance of the material book itself and the wealth of genres that circulated in the early modern period. Major projects such as the English Broadside Ballad Archive (EEBA) continue to reveal how readers, writers, printers, and performers engaged with cheap print in the nascent public sphere. Much of this scholarship has been underpinned by an understanding of the vitality of the material text and the material practices of print-making and dissemination. Running parallel with these concerns, Leah Orr examines print culture in the long eighteenth century to challenge the way in which canonical authors continue to dominate scholarship. By focusing upon the rise of the novel, Orr contends, we fail to see how ‘the economics of producing and selling books played a central role in what was published’ (p. ). Prior to the emergence of Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, and the English Short Title Catalogue, access to early books was limited, leading to a distorted view of what people were reading in the long eighteenth century. Recognizing that these resources also have their limitations, Orr contends that they, along with an examination of the Stationers’ Register, are valuable starting points for considering what was read in the eighteenth century . What emerges is that printers continued to print Elizabethan and medieval texts into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, texts translated primarily from French sources, and that the works of fiction valued by later critics tend to be the exception rather than the norm. e book is divided into two parts. Part , ‘Fiction in the Print Culture World’, seeks first to define the novel through exploring eighteenth-century concepts of fiction, and then examines fiction and the book trade before moving on to discuss authorship and anonymous publication. Part , ‘Fiction in England, –’,  Reviews develops insights gained in the first part to focus upon the English book trade, speci fically reprints of older texts, texts translated into English from other vernacular languages, and fiction that was published for a purpose or for entertainment. ese terms, as Orr acknowledges, pose their own conceptual difficulties, and I would have liked to see a more theorized approach to both questions of genre and the differences between ‘fiction for purpose’ and ‘fiction for entertainment’. Nevertheless, this is an ambitious book that adds to the expanding wealth of scholarship on the book trade that systematically dismantles ‘the rise of the novel’ narratives of fiction production. L J M U R W Gentry Life in Georgian Ireland: e Letters of Edmund Spencer (–). Ed. by D F and A H. Cambridge: Legenda. . xiv+  pp. £. ISBN ––––. Property, or the lack thereof, seems to have defined those who aspired to be considered ‘gentry’ in Georgian Ireland, where Catholics made up % of the population but owned only % of the land. Suggestively, it is not entirely clear from these letters if Edmund Spencer belongs to the Protestant ascendancy or is...