Choice Review

Part of the series "The Novel in History," Richetti's book offers a well-researched and detailed study of the major trends in 18th-century narrative from Aphra Behn through the major novelists (Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett) to the later women writers and the sentimental novelists. Richetti (Univ. of Pennsylvania) argues that the novels "render a bargaining for identity and authority," which he understands to be at the center of the social changes. The author attempts to determine how social changes influenced the changes in narrative practice and the extent to which the novels were agents or catalysts in those changes. Although he is clear that the text is not life, Richetti also contends that the novels were at the core of an 18th-century debate about the nature of the moral and social world. This volume will serve graduate students and researchers concerned with such debates and the role of literature as both shaper and reflector of the historical context. M. H. Kealy; Immaculata College