YES, 31, 200I YES, 31, 200I the LifeofJohnson into issuesof character,demonstrationofJohnson's compassion, and of biographical authenticity, having been insistent on learning fromJohnson exactly what he wrote for Dodds and what changes were by Dodds himself,thereby 'indicatingthe importancefor him of locating the authorin the text' (p. 143). In this, Boswell's instincts were in tune with his time. Culturally,politically, in that, as Bainesputsit, 'thediscoveryof forgerywas neverneutral'(p. 3I), and above all financially,the eighteenth century became preoccupied with property, identity, and authenticityto a characteristicallyobsessiveextent,with appropriatelycomplex, and harsh, legal provision. 'Between I700 and I80o, some thirty-six statutes, virtually all of them capital, dealt obliquely or directly with a multitude of documentaryforgeries.'Many offences were 'potential, defined at the origin of the institutionand previous to any crime' (p. 8). As an analysisof the configurationof the economic mentality,and of itslegal and culturalimplications,the bookperforms a valuable service. Beyond this, though, it acts also as an intriguing collection of narratives.Forgersand forgeries abound as the policing and penalties increase in rigour:Lewis Theobald and his edition of Wycherley;Eustace Budgell, accused of forging Matthew Tindall's will and eventually taking his own life; John Ward, pilloried in I727 for forging documents relating to the estate of the Duke of Buckinghamshire;Japhet Crook, also known as Sir Peter Stranger, convicted of forging a lease in 1729 and, aftera delay of two years, punished by having his ears cut off and his nostrilsslit in the pillory by the common hangman. The actual lives of these Proteancriminalsmake for revealingreading. UNIVERSITY OF NORTHUMBRIA AT NEWCASTLE ALLAN INGRAM Licensing Entertainment. The Elevationof NovelReadingin Britain, i684-I750. By WILLIAM B. WARNER. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. I998. xvi+ 325 pp. $48; ?37.50 (paperbound $22.50; ?I6.95). Speaking in Hunger:Gender, Discourse, and Consumption in 'Clarissa'. By DONNALEE FREGA.(CulturalFrames,FramingCulture.) Columbia: University of South CarolinaPress. I998. viii + I77 pp. $29.95 (paperbound $14.95). How did 'thenovel' become the novel aswe thinkof it?Hardlyanyone now believes in 'The Rise of the Novel' as Ian Wattdelineated it in 1957but laterversionsof this storyremaincontradictoryand contested.WilliamB. Warner'sLicensing Entertainment is an ambitious and genuinely original attempt to find a fresh perspective and get past some stultifyingassumptions. His concern is with what he calls the 'cultural' history of the novel much more than with any sort of generic history. As he says near the outset, his 'account offers a deliberate alternative to the story of heroic authorial innovation' created by Watt and given 'theoretically sophisticated revisions'by McKeon and Armstrong (p. xiii). Warneraskshow people felt about reading novels (mostlyguilty or defensive) and how the pleasures of novel-reading combined with disdain for the form to generate the relatively pretentious and respectablestoriesenshrinedby twentieth-centurycriticsas 'the novel'. Introduction and conclusion frame five text-oriented chapters, devoted respectively to Behn, Manley and Haywood, Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. In each case Warner focuses principally on a single work (e.g. Behn's LoveLetters). Behn, Manley, and Haywood get a good deal of close reading;Roxana a lot less;Pamela and Joseph Andrews mercifullylittle. Earlyfiction has been helpfullystudiedfrom various vantage points, most notably by John Richetti (1969), J. Paul Hunter (1990), and the LifeofJohnson into issuesof character,demonstrationofJohnson's compassion, and of biographical authenticity, having been insistent on learning fromJohnson exactly what he wrote for Dodds and what changes were by Dodds himself,thereby 'indicatingthe importancefor him of locating the authorin the text' (p. 143). In this, Boswell's instincts were in tune with his time. Culturally,politically, in that, as Bainesputsit, 'thediscoveryof forgerywas neverneutral'(p. 3I), and above all financially,the eighteenth century became preoccupied with property, identity, and authenticityto a characteristicallyobsessiveextent,with appropriatelycomplex, and harsh, legal provision. 'Between I700 and I80o, some thirty-six statutes, virtually all of them capital, dealt obliquely or directly with a multitude of documentaryforgeries.'Many offences were 'potential, defined at the origin of the institutionand previous to any crime' (p. 8). As an analysisof the configurationof the economic mentality,and of itslegal and culturalimplications,the bookperforms a valuable service. Beyond this, though, it acts also as an intriguing collection of narratives.Forgersand forgeries abound as the policing and penalties increase...