Nation and Novel
The English Novel from its Origins to the Present Day

What is 'English' about the English novel, and how has the idea of the English nation been shaped by the writers of fiction? How do the novel's profound differences from poetry and drama affect its representation of national consciousness? Nation and Novel sets out to answer these questions by tracing English prose fiction from its late medieval origins through its stories of rogues and criminals, family rebellions and suffering heroines, to the present-day novels of immigration. Major novelists from Daniel Defoe to the late twentieth century have drawn on national history and mythology in novels which have pitted Cavalier against Puritan, Tory against Whig, region against nation, and domesticity against empire. The novel is deeply concerned with the fate of the nation, but almost always at variance with official and ruling-class perspectives on English society. Patrick Parrinder's groundbreaking new literary history outlines the English novel's distinctive, sometimes paradoxical, and often subversive view of national character and identity. This sophisticated yet accessible assessment of the relationship between fiction and nation will set the agenda for future research and debate.

Introduction. 1. The Novel and the Nation. 2. Cavaliers, Puritans, and Rogues: English Fiction from 1485 to 1700. 3. Cross-Grained Crusoe: Defoe and the Contradictions of Englishness. 4. Histories of Rebellion: From 1688 to 1793. 5. The Novel of Suffering: Richardson, Fielding, and Goldsmith. 6. The Benevolent Robber: From Fielding to the 1790s. 7. Romanitic Toryism: Scott, Disraeli, and Others. 8. Tory Daughters and the Politics of Marriage: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Elizabeth Gaskell. 9. 'Turn Again, Dick Whittington!': Dickens and the Fiction of the City. 10. At Home and Abroad in Victorian and Edwardian Fiction: From iVanity Fair/i to iThe Secret Agent/i. 11. Puritan and Provincial Englands: From Emily Bronte to D. H. Lawrence. 12. From Forster to Orwell: The Novel of England's Destiny. 13. From Kipling to Independence: Losing the Empire. 14. Round Tables: Chivalry and the Twentieth-Century English Novel- Sequence. 15. Inward Migrations: Multiculturalism, Anglicization, and Internal Exile. Conclusion: On Englishness and the Twenty-First Century Novel.

Born in Cornwall, Patrick Parrinder grew up in London and south-east England and went on to read English at Cambridge University, where he became a Fellow of King's College. He moved to the University of Reading in 1974, and has been a professor there since 1986. He has been a visiting professor in the United States (University of Illinois, 1978-9; University of California, Santa Barbara, 1989) and Canada (McGill University, 1979). Work on Nation and Novel was aided by a Leverhulme Major Research fellowship (2001-4). He has been a contributor to the London Review of Books and many other journals.