Overview

During the Minerva Press's heyday, founder William Lane published in an extraordinary range of genres. Following the original organizational taxonomy that Lane used in his own promotional materials, Eve Tavor Bannet here explores each: Historical fiction, Terror and Mystery Fiction ('Gothic'), Fairy Tales, Tales of the Times, National Tales, Wanderers Tales, Novels of Education, Female Biography and Marital Domestic Fiction. In providing the first modern analysis of the majority of texts that Lane published, she reveals how the Minerva Press bridged the gap between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction and sheds light on how contemporary methods of imitative writing produced its characteristically fluid, hybrid and modular fictions. These characteristics, she demonstrates, enabled its women authors to converse with one another, intervening in key contemporary political, cultural and domestic debates and earned many well-deserved popularity and praise from those judging by the pre-Romantic methods of evaluation in use.

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9781009728355

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Reviews

'This compelling contribution to studies of popular literature of the late eighteenth century argues that the fiction issuing from the Minerva Press in the Lane years not only dominated the contemporary literary landscape but also profoundly shaped the transnational novel tradition through the Victorian era. Taking her cue from Lane's own taxonomic titles in analysing almost two hundred works, Bannet delineates nine principal genres of fiction developed by Minerva authors, showing how, through techniques of imitation, innovation, and debate, these authors wielded an immense social and political power worthy of their patron goddess.' Betty A. Schellenberg, Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, Simon Fraser University 'This deeply researched and eminently readable book offers a compelling re-evaluation of the voluminous outputs of the Minerva Press and reveals how its once derided authors, with the support of publisher William Lane, intervened in a range of vital political and cultural debates about gender, the law and national identity.' Jennie Batchelor, Professor of Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies, Department of English and Related Literature, University of York

Author Information

Eve Tavor Bannet is George Lynn Cross Professor Emeritus, University of Oklahoma. Her monographs include Empire of Letters (2005), Eighteenth-Century Manners of Reading (2017), Transatlantic Stories and the History of Reading, 1720–1810 (2011) and The Letters in the Story (2021). Her work focuses on eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century letters, print culture, women writers and transatlantic exchanges.

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