The Printing Press and the Rise of the Novel in England in the 18th Century/ 1.
(Andrea Timár)
England becomes more and more print-oriented culture in the 18th century
1. printed items produced: 1740: 2000 -> 1800: 6500
2. literacy: doubles in the 18th c. -> 1750: 60 % of adult men, 40 % of adult women. (more in
London, Scotland, Southeast)
3. bad educational system -> self-taught readers (practical purposes/pleasure) - > no
classical learning
4. new readership: largely from middle classes and lower
Readings: practical needs of different trades, stories of notorious thieves and pirates, travel
books, accounts of crime, anecdotes, how-to guides on ethics, political pamphlets,
newspapers -> popular culture.
-> boundary between fact and fiction is uncertain
I. Rise of newspapers
First newspaper-like paper: London Gazette (1665), royalist government’s official newspaper,
monopoly situation -> manipulates readers
<- “Licensing Act” (1662): to “prevent the frequent Abuses in printing seditious
treasonable and unlicensed Bookes and Pamphlets and for regulating of Printing and
Printing Presses".
1678: “Popish Plot”: government + Act collapses > news market opens, newspapers multiply.
Newspapers: internally heterogeneous (reports on parliamentary proceedings,
speeches, political manifestos, accounts of military encounters, advertisements, reports on
manners, fashion, crimes, punishments, miracle cures, etc) -> new way of reading: extensive
skim-reading
The Public Advertiser (1657) The Ladies Mercury (1693) The Daily Courant (1702) <- Fr:
“courir” (run) + “au courant” (up-to-date)
Richard Steele: The Tatler (1709) R. Steele and Joseph Addison: The Spectator (1711)
Later: The Female Tatler and The Female Spectator
Introduce a new genre: periodical essay: to improve the mind and manners of readers in a
witty, enjoyable, accessible style -> to attract a large readership (business) Social ideal:
urbanity, good taste, moderation, reasonableness, self-control.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744), in The Spectator, criticises all journalistic ventures
because of their descent into triviality (cf. later: The Rape of the Lock), their taste for
conversation and gossiping <- only financial interests
<- indeed: huge periodical market (mercantile and middle classes) is in place
- > spread of public coffee-houses: conversation, gossiping, reading news, discussing events
-- > emergence of the “public sphere” (cf:: Jürgen Habermas: The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere, 1962.): ‘the sphere of private people who join together to form a
"public."’ Spread of literacy, newspapers (available information+opinions), coffee-houses ->
free discussion, rational-critical debate on politics and literature independently from
authorities -> “public opinion” -> separation from and a certain control over authorities and
received oppinions -> rise of liberal democracy
II. Rise of the novel.
Economic criteria of the production of literature: price of an author estimated by the
number of sheets he wrote -> favours prose over verse and drama
Novel <- Italian novella (tale, a piece of news) - > both: early and mid-18th c: fluid
boundary between fact and fiction -> 18th c. novels: “history”, “adventures”, “lives”, “memoirs”,
“fortunes and misfortunes.” Present fiction as fact and dramatise fact as fiction
Definition (1996) “a long prose narrative about largely fictional if usually realistic
characters and plausible events” (Richetti, “Introduction”, 1)
Realism: novels are both constructed by the real, everyday world and shape this everyday
world -> rather than mirroring ordinary life, they intervene in the ordinary, real world: they
endow it with a shape (or shapelessness) and a meaning (or meaninglessness); novels
conjure up a fictitious world that gives the illusion of being applicable to reality.
The novel is surely not “romance”, not “allegory” (like John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim's
Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, 1678) and yet, not newspaper either (N:
long, coherent, narrative, structural hierarchy bw. trivial and important events).
First to call his own work a novel: William Congreve, in his preface to Incognita: or,
Love and Duty Reconciled (1692) Yet, the term “novel” only came into general use in the late
18th century
<- Clara Reeve: The Progress of Romance (1785):
“The Romance is a heroic fable, which treats of fabulous persons and things. -- The Novel is
a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it is written. The Romance in lofty
and elevated language, describes what never happened nor is likely to happen. -- The Novel
gives a familiar relations of such things, as pass every day before our eyes, such as may
happen to our friend, or to ourselves; and the perfection of it, is to represent every scene, in
so easy and natural manner, and to make them appear so probable, as to deceive us into a
persuasion (at least while we are reading) that all is real, until we are affected by the joys or
distresses, of the persons in the story, as if they were our own.” (Reeve, I, 111, qted by
Probyn, 3)
1. Recognisable, local, and particular social and cultural context.
2. Simple, natural style
3. Focus on the present
4. Encompasses either the whole life, or a longer section of the life of a character ->
presents the passing of time through life and does it in a realistic way
--> possibility of identification with characters
Character: ordinary, individual name, has “identity”
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
personal identity: continuity of one’s consciousness through time (!): remembrance of
past states of consciousnesses, projections in the future -> causal connections through life,
one event determines the next ones (-> Paul Ricoeur’s (1913–2005) concept of “narrative
identity”: the structural model of our own life stories can be found in novels)
emerging (!) concept of individuality int he 18th c.: personal autonomy, freedom of
choice, self-consciousness: reflected in and reflected upon in novels - characters’ acts and
thoughts + world presented from (an) individual point(s) of view(s) (that of a character, or that
of narrator)
<- shift in consciousness about life and its possibilities <Bank of England (1694) -> financial revolution -> one can acquire good social status
through hard work, individual achievements (no need for inherited property)
18th novels “reflect upon the middle-class myth” (Watt) of personal possibility and
development (leaving home/past authorities, strive for better position, finding ‘true self’) ->
Bildungsroman (later term)
Readership: middle class + bellow (novels are relatively cheap+ circulating libraries),
more female than male (more leisure time), more young people than old. Novels are mostly
about young people (important life decisions, love, career) -> identification (cf: Reeve) ->
novels: guides to life.
What’s wrong with novels (according to the moralists)? fiction <-> reality
1. Reading time stolen from work time
2. novels as “guides to life” = escapes from life: imaginary solutions, overheat passions,
offer more than real life -> socially subversive
-> novels: important contributions to the shaping of reality by readers
Suggested Reading:
The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth Century Novel, ed. John Richetti, Cambridge
UP, 1996
Probyn, Clive P. English Fiction of the Eighteenth Century, Longman, 1987.
A Companion to Literature from Blake to Byron, ed. David Womersley, Blackwell, 2000.
Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel, Penguin Books, 1968 (1957)