Minervas Gothics: The Politics and Poetics of Romantic Exchange, 1780-1820 9781786833686, 1786833689

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Preface
1 Remapping Minerva’s Influence on the Novel Market
Section One: Feminist Discernment and Minerva’s Production of Romantic Fantasy
Section Overview
2 Julies and St Preuxes: Networking ‘Lady’ Authors, 1785–1789
3 Wollstonecraft and the Revolutionary Feminist Novel: At a Crossroads with Wordsworth
Section Two: The Revolution Debate in Britain: Minerva and the Politics of Feeling
Section Overview
4 Providential Adaptations to the Romantic Fantasy, 1790–1794
5 Godwin and Providential Feeling in Things As They Are: Meeting Readers Where They Are
6 Providential Feeling at Minerva’s Zenith: What the Commoner Teaches the Nobleman
Section Three: The Forgotten Poetics of Romantic Exchange: Gothic Habits of Mind
Section Overview
7 Minerva’s Continued Influence: The Poet as Nightingale in Shelley’s 1810 Gothics
8 Reinstating Romantic Fantasy in Minerva’s ‘Late’ Novels: Romanticism and ‘Gothic’ Habits of Mind
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Minerva's Gothics The PoJiI ics and Poetics '!I Romantic Exchannc, 1780-1820

Elizabeth A. Neiman GOTIIIC

J lTIRA!l)

')TUDI[S

MINERVA' S GOTHICS

SERIES PREFACE Gothic Literary Studies is dedicated to publishing groundbreaking scholarship on Gothic in literature and film. The Gothic, which has been subjected to a variety of critical and theoretical approaches, is a form which plays an important role in our understanding of literary, intellectual and cultural histories. The series seeks to promote challenging and innovative approaches to Gothic which question any aspect of the Gothic tradition or perceived critical orthodoxy.Volumes in the series explore how issues such as gender, religion, nation and sexuality have shaped our view of the Gothic tradition. Both academically rigorous and informed by the latest developments in critical theory, the series provides an important focus for scholarly developments in Gothic studies, literary studies, cultural studies and critical theory. The series will be of interest to students of all levels and to scholars and teachers of the Gothic and literary and cultural histories. SERIES EDITORS Andrew Smith, University of Sheffield Benjamin F. Fisher, University of Mississippi EDITORIAL BOARD Kent Ljungquist, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts Richard Fusco, St Joseph's University, Philadelphia David Punter, University of Bristol Chris Baldick, University of London Angela Wright, University of Sheffield Jerrold E. Hogle, University ofArizona

Minerva's Gothics The Politics and Poetics of Romantic Exchange, 1780-1820 Elizabeth A. Neiman

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2019

©

Elizabeth A. Neirnan, 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproducedin any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any mediwn by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Applications for the copyright owner's written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS.

WUJW.uwp.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-78683-367-9 eISBN 978-1-78683-368-6 The right ofElizabethA. Neiman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

IJ FSC -­ MIX

FSC- C013604

Typeset by Biblichor Ltd, Edinburgh Printed by CPI Antony Rowe, Melksharn

To Dylan Dryer, and to Emma and Simon Dryer-Neiman, with love and gratitude

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CONTENTS

List of Tables List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface

1

Remapping Minerva's Influence on the Novel Market

IX X Xl xv

1

Section One: Feminist Discernment and Minerva's Production of Romantic Fantasy

Secti on Overview 2 3

Julies and St Preuxes: Networking 'Lady' Authors, 1785-1789 Wollstonecraft and the Revolutionary Feminist Novel: At a Crossroads with Wordsworth

49 53 73

Section Two: The Revolution Debate in Britain: Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

Section Overview 4 5 6

Providential Adaptations to the Romantic Fantasy, 1790-1794 Godwin and Providential Feeling in Things As They Are: Meeting Readers Where They Are Providential Feeling at Minerva's Zenith: What the Commoner Teaches the Nobleman

101 104 128 147

Contents

Section Three: The Forgotten Poetics of Romantic Exchange: Gothic Habits of Mind

Secti on Overview 7 8

173

Minerva's Continued Influence: The Poet as Nightingale in Shelley's 1810 Gothics Reinstating Romantic Fantasy in Minerva's 'Late' Novels: Romanticism and ' Gothic' Habits of Mind

Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

177

199 225 231 261 277

Vll1

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1: Ratio of female novelists, categorized by 'type', 1780-1829 Table 1.2: Ratio of male novelists, categorized by 'type', 1780-1829

IX

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1. 1 Differentiating between a 'gender' and a 'Minerva' effect in publication records Fig. 1.2 Nwnbers of publishing female and male Minerva novelists per period, inclusively and exclusively defined Fig. 1.3 Percentage of unidentified novelists who sign 'by a lady' , 1780--1820 Fig. 1. 4 Percentage of female novelists who sign 'by a lady', 1785-1820 Fig. 1. 5 Percentage of novelists to publish anonymously; per period Fig. 1.6 Author's signature from Mary Ann Hanway's Andrew Stuart, or the Northern Wanderer (1800) Fig. 1. 7 Nwnbers of all debut female novelists, 1780-1820 Fig. 1. 8 The rarity of the single-novel author: a 'Minerva effect' dissipates in 1812-1820 Fig. 1. 9 Paper sample, Minerva 1799 Fig. 1. 10 Paper sample, Minerva 1820 Fig. 1. 11 Paper sample, Colburn 1818 Fig. 1. 12 Paper sample, Longman, Hurst Rees, Onne and Brown 1819 Fig. 1. 13 Percentage of 2+ 'persistent' female novelists who publish from one period to the next Fig. 1. 14 Numbers of2+ female 'persistent' novelists who publish in each particular period Fig. 1. 15 Persistence rate for all novelists, by percentage Fig. 1. 16 Persistence rate for all novelists, by nwnbers

x

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Because this book has been long in the making, many acknowl­ edgements are due. Special thanks, however, are due to University of Maine colleagues and especially English department chairs Naomi Jacobs, Richard Brucher, Laura Cowan and Steven Evans. Without their advocacy, I would not have had the time, space or resources to complete this book. I also want to take the opportunity to thank Naomi Jacobs, Ben Friedlander,Jennifer Moxley and Sarah Harlan­ Haughey for reading chapters from the manuscript at key points along the way, and with pleasure acknowledge other UMaine colleagues for their encouragement, most especially Jessica Miller, Mazie Hough and Susan Gardner. My research on Minerva began some ten years prior as a doctoral student at the University ofWisconsin, Milwaukee. There, Bruce Horner and Min Zhan Lu taught me to take the work of margin­ alized writers seriously, a pedagogical practice that influences how I approach and read Minerva novels. Now a faculty member myself, I am especially grateful to Sukanya Banerjee and Barrett Kalter for helping to supervise a project outside their areas of expertise and when still on the tenure track. The dissertation was, as it turns out, just a starting point for this book. l owe special thanks to my students at the University of Maine. Their creativity and dedication helped me to make progress on questions important to my research through a series of advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses. I have also benefited enormously from presenting my work at confer­ ences in both North America and the UK. The scholarship of and more informal exchanges with Anthony Mandal,Jennie Batchelor, Edward Jacobs, Yael Shapira, Christina Morin, Hannah Doherty Hudson and Daniel Mangiavellano imprint this book. I am particu­ larly grateful to Anthony MandaI for his thoughtful and thorough

Acknowledgements

reading of my manuscript at a critical point in its development, and for offering his journal, Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840, for a forthcoming special issue on the Minerva Press (2019). Thanks also to April London for providing a forum for annotations on novels not featured in this book with the invi­ tation to submit to The Cambridge Companion Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820, and to Mark Towsey, whose AHRC-funded research colloquia 'Libraries in the Atlantic World' (2014-15) helped me to think more expansively about my project at an early stage in its inception. A Chawton House Library fellowship was instrumental to my research and I extend a warm thanks to librarian Derren Bevin for allowing me free range of the stacks. Thanks also to Derren for his willingness at the eleventh hour to retake photos for a higher reso­ lution print than I had available. Acknowledgement is also due to special collections librarians at the New York Society Library and the University of Minnesota library for providing me with a comfortable place to sit and read. As a version of the second half of Chapter 1 was published in European Romantic Review in September 201 5 , thanks to Taylor & Francis for permission to reprint. I am particularly grateful to ERR editors Regina Hewitt and the late Diane Long Hoeveler for agreeing to send this article out for a second round of reviews after it had been rejected on a third read, following a mixed review. This extended review process was instrumental and a starting point for the book as it introduced me to scholarship ofwhich I was unaware, and pushed me to clarifY and refine my central argument. With keen awareness of the potential complications that arise when looking to publish a monograph, especially perhaps a first one, I thank Sarah Lewis, Head of Commissioning at the University ofWales Press, for her encouragement of the project and for keeping me up to date with the manuscript's process in both peer review and while in press. I am also thankful to copy-editor Henry Maas for his attentive eye and good humour. Work on this book has been accompanied by profound changes in my life. Most notably, I became a mother (first, at the dissertation stage, and then nearly nine years later, while completing my manu­ script), while also losing my beloved mother, Judy Neiman, to xu

Acknowledgements

pancreatic cancer. l owe special thanks to family members and friends not only for their support but also, in many cases, for their input on the project. I would probably have shied from statistical analysis but for the guidance of my twin sister, biologist Maurine Neiman. My dear friend Emily Fridlund was from the first a cham­ pion of this project as well as an enthusiastic reader. Special thanks to my father, Bill Neiman, for his love, encouragement and support. I could not, finally, have completed this book without the critical acumen of Dylan Dryer, who over the past ten years proved time and again to be a never-failing, never-flagging reader and editor.

X111

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Priface

William Lane's popular London press, Minerva, published an unprecedented number of new novels between 1790 and 1820 and brought dozens ofwriters - female and male, provincial and urban, English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish - into the burgeoning market­ place.1 Lane, a savvy businessman who capitalized on the fashion for novels, advertised for new manuscripts and sold his stock as circulating-library collections to shopkeepers across the nation.2 Because these novels catered to the day's fashion (e.g. gothic romances, sentimental novels, tales of the times), they were and still are generally dismissed as ephemera.Yet recently, scholars interested in historicizing Romantic conceptions of genius and authorship have begun to write Minerva back into Romantic-era literary history.3 In particular, Minerva has been said to elicit Romantic 'anxiety', Lucy Newlyn's term for the period response to prolific print culture that was to redefine literature as imaginative, individ­ ually authored and, above all, distinct from all other forms of writing ' 'Anxiety' has helpfully illuminated Minerva's role in inciting Romantic redefinitions of authorship and literature; however, remaining focused on canonical Romanticism, it reveals nothing new about Minerva novels. As we shall see, Romantic anxiety is more accurately understood as a mutual though not entirely equitable 'exchange' , a dynamic interrelationship among Minerva novels and Romantic-era politics and poetics. Minerva's admittedly derivative themes and otherwise borrowed material (from character types to fashionable terms like 'poetical' and 'the sublime') draw its authors into a shared circuit of production that

Preface

includes writers who may now be regarded as canonical, but who were at the time competitors for a rapidly expanding readership. By making Minerva novels themselves the centre of the analysis, Minerva's Gothics adds to what we know about the market's impact on Romantic-era redefinitions of authorship in two ways. First, while the term 'exchange' allows us to maintain the Press's repu­ tation for formulaic or easily exchangeable novels (which often literally exchanged hands), it also allows us to recognize that Minerva novelists react creatively to an increasingly stratified literary market by borrowing the gendered rhetoric of'prolific ' print culture. Such rhetoric includes references to the sublime and to original genius as well as to circulating-library novels themselves, which their critics commonly treat as a feminized form, irrespective of the gender of the author.5 Thanks to this critical reception, Minerva novels become the feminized doubles of the ethos of genius: their authors, novel readers-turned-writers, and their works, the practically self­ reproducing circulating-library novel. By repurposing these 'doubles', however, Minerva novelists fashion an actively collaborative model of authorship that enables them to enter debates over woman's nature, the social order and the literary market 6 Second, it will be seen that Minerva's authorial model surfaces in Romantic poetics ­ and in particular, in Percy Shelley's portrayal of the poet in 'A Defence of Poetry' (1821). Even as Shelley continues the cultural work (begun most prominently by Wordsworth in his 180011802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads) of elevating the poet above all other writers, his vision ofthe ideal poet (impassioned, inspired, prophetic) reflects a profoundly social understanding of how the poet comes to compose his verse. Minerva's Gothics restores a forgotten pathway between first­ generation Romantic reactions to popular print culture and Shelley's influential conceptualization of the poet.At the height of Minerva's popularity, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and William Wordsworth all treat the novel as a test-case for examining the relationship between society and individual habits of mind, either by writing their own novels (Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs ofWoman, or Maria, 1798; Godwin's Things As They Are; or the Adventures of Caleb Williams, 1794) or, in Wordsworth's case, by pointedly not writing one. All three writers investigate the limits of popular print -

XVI

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culture and in particular its effects on naIve, feminine readers. If each is preoccupied with reaching a wide readership, each also treats formulaic novels as part of a larger, systemic problem: that education, comprehensively defined, creates servile minds. Minerva novelists provide a more democratic view of how literary c onventions work on the minds of everyday writers and readers. This reassessment of Minerva novels shows that Romantic anxiety both underwrites and effaces a surprisingly modern assessment of the composing process, or what happens when writers sit down to write.WhenWo11stonecraft, Godwin and Wordsworth highlight the mutually constituent rela­ tionships among literary conventions, personal dispositions, and larger political and cultural formations, they too portray authorial invention as a social encounter between authors and a shared text. Yet unlike their colleagues at the Minerva Press, they envisage a select few writers capable of transcending the constraints of the market. Their vision helps create the conditions for what will eventua11y become the dominant aesthetic associated with canonical Romanticism: the poet's turn inwards, as if free from the market, politics and a11 conventional social constraints.7 Newlyn and others who attend to the economics of the literary market have complicated the simplistic, if durable, portrait of the Romantic artist as 'original genius'. S As William St Clair explains: The rhetoric of romanticism, mainly devised and developed in Victorian times, stressed the uniqueness and autonomy of the 'crea­ tive' author . . . In practice, however, most authors were obliged to operate within a commercial system in which they, their advisors, and their publishers attempted tojudge what the market wanted and how best to supply it. 9

While Michael Gamer agrees with St Clair that Romantic writers interacted with the market, he restores emphasis on authors, demon­ strating that they recognized the necessary collaborations required to forge an image and cultivate success.lO Minerva's Gothics focuses on an even subtler (because not always intentional) site of collab­ oration between author and text: the genre expectations that produce authorial agency, even as they constrain it. This approach illuminates Anis Bawarshi's explanation that 'genre is what it a110ws XVll

Preface

us to do, the potential that makes the actual possible.'" Minerva novelists - marginalized by a feminizing discourse and, more often than not, women themselves - are uniquely situated to feel the constraints of their genre: the circulating-library novel. Rather than pretend to rise above these constraints, these novelists acknowledge them, if sometimes ruefully, showing that they recognize their labour as a collaborative process and that change can only be engendered over time. After all, not all Romantic-era writers bought into what Clifford Siskin calls the 'Romantic myth of culture, a myth which assigns to a set of primary "artistic " texts, and their "creators" , the power of psychologically transcending the everyday.'12 Minerva's Gothics shows that period authors, canonized and marginalized alike, treat the popular novel as a genre that compels the writer to adhere to convention. When Wordsworth, Wollstonecraft and Godwin describe popular literature as perpetuating a conservative worldview, they partially realize the poststructuralist position that writers both inscribe and are inscribed by social texts. This realization is only partial, however, because they still presume that some writers are capable of transcending their socio-political context to reshape the possible. 'Prolific ' print culture inspires these first-generation Romantics to apply empiricism, or attention to sensation and association, to the writing experience. Merging Romantic-style interiority with a neo-classicist emphasis on authorial imitation, this trio helps to precipitate the Romantic theories of the mind that prefigure 'inspiration' as spontaneous and self-originating. 13 By contrast, reading Minerva novels as exchangeable (but not inter­ changeable) nodes in a network illustrates that many period novelists do not see any necessary c ontradiction between imagination and freedom or imitation and constraint. Their novels can help us see formulaic or 'reproductive ' novels differently, and thereby expand what we see about authorship, then and now. 14 Like other scholars who examine the market's influence on Romantic definitions of authorship, Wordsworth's well-documented anxiety is a touchstone of my discussion.1s Building in particular on Gamer's description of\Vordsworth's 'offensive ' (and not merely 'defensive ') stance in the 180011802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, and how this stance reflects Wordsworth's debt to the popular market, 16 XVl11

Preface

contend that when Wordsworth presents the idealized Poet as subject to his own self-made 'habits of mind' in 1800, he inverts the novel-reader-turned-writer as 'she' is commonly imagined by period critics (young, female, recycling the same tired fantasies). This imagined author is a 'stamp' , merely reproducing the shop­ worn conventions that, having filled her imagination, she mistakes as her own. 17 By contrast, the Poet's capacity to formulate his own habits of mind steels him against the sensationalized, false feelings of popular literature - a point of contrast that Wordsworth sharpens in 1802 when he elevates the Poet to almost superhuman heights (,the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth and over all time'iS). This idealized Poet's capacity to feel and think anew becomes a central feature of canonical Romanticism,just as its dark double, the hapless novel reader-turned-writer, becomes a metonym for the popular print market. Wo11stonecraft and Godwin will be shown to adopt a similar point of view as Wordsworth in their respective 1790s novels , but they do not suggest, as does Wordsworth himself, that they are free from c onventional c onstraints on authorial innovation. Both conclude that popular conventions delimit to an important degree what the responsible writer should say, but their reasons for this conclusion differ. Wollstonecraft delimits her vision in Wrongs to convince her compatriots that the elite female author, despite her 'herculean' capacity to rise above convention,19 is still beleaguered by the emotions and desires that structure women's popular novels. In Wrongs, Maria cannot help but desire Darnford, who envisages her as angelic as the 'highly-finished Minervas' of the popular press20 - until, that is, she has sex with him and he tires of her. When Godwin elevates Wrongs above most novels in 1799, he adopts what becomes the standard Romantic view: 'it is the refuge ofbarren authors only, to crowd their fictions with . . . events.'21 Yet back in 1794, a tense year for revolutionary writers, Godwin appre­ ciated the potential of formulaic conventions for meeting readers where they are. In Things As They Are, Godwin revises the Enlightenment view that truth is disseminated from elite authors downwards, instead demonstrating that authors who hope to influ­ ence readers must first prepare themselves to be influenced by the XiX

Preface

feelings and habits of mind they strive to amend. Still, even as Godwin acknowledges the power of a shared social text, like Wollstonecraft he implies that were he not so mindful of social reform he would pursue his own independent vision. Together, these first-generation Romantics anticipate Shelley's mature poetics in 'Defence' as well as what I am calling aforgotten poetics of Romantic exchange. Shelley, though influenced by Wollstonecraft and Godwin's politics and Wordsworth's poetics, has a more dialogic perspective than his mentors on the poetics of popular fiction. In St. Irvyne (1811), Shelley recalls a key word from Wordsworth's 180011802 Preface when subjecting gothic hero and sentimental heroine alike to the 'mechanical' feelings that engender conventional plots like the heroine's seduction (Eloise succumbs to the villain after his image enters her mind with 'almost mechanical force', troubling her with unwanted feelings"). Wollstonecraft and Godwin also subject their protagonists to conventional feelings, but only Shelley does so without suggesting that he delimits his vision to reach period readers. Since Shelley himself read and wrote gothic novels when young, he is better able to see that all writers are automatically influenced by the feelings, desires and values that inscribe popular conventions. However, Shelley's eulogizing of the Poet-figure in 'Defence' was to undercut this initially progressive position, effacing his debt to the novel market and solidifYing period distinctions between the freedom of poetic genius and the servility of writing for one's own day and age. This book's scope and content challenges an anachronism that still permeates studies of the Romantic era. If Minerva novels helped to precipitate the modern division between high and low literature, they circulated prior to this division and should therefore be read alongside other Romantic-era texts. Mid- to late eighteenth-century writers published in multiple genres, making boundaries between philosophical and literary texts more porous than they eventually became.23 We know that Romantic-era writers often attached competing meanings to the same culturally legible terms and that novels in particular were used as a vehicle for political and philo­ sophical debate (e.g. the 'war of ideas' waged through Jacobin and anti-Jacobin novels24). Minerva novelists, by contrast, are not usually imagined to have actively participated in these debates, and their xx

Preface

novels are frequently portrayed as merely reflecting the day's popular tastes and conservative ideologies.25 That portrayal flattens terms that many Minerva novelists would have contested. Minerva)s Gothics acknowledges both the formulaic quality of Minerva's 'borrowed material' and the special quality of this material for marginalized writers. While no one would dispute that Minerva's most popular conventions and fashionable tropes are literary hand-me-downs, this is not a11 that they are. Minerva's derivative themes are an accidental inheritance that furnishes writers with the language to respond to Romantic-era debates, most notably by refashioning Romantic redefinitions of authorship and literature into a collective authorial model. This authorial model can be hard to see, for despite their numbers, Minerva novelists do not appear to have participated in the sort of close authorial communities honoured as 'circles' in our literary j ournals, library collections and databases (e.g. 'The Wordsworth Circle', ' Shelley and his Circle', ' Romantic Circles'). Moreover, they often worked quickly and in acute financial distress, as their letters to the Royal Literary Fund suggest.26 Minerva's authorial model is generic, by which I mean that these writers de-emphasize personality by linking their work to the codes and conventions of formula (and indeed, many publish anonymously). When Minerva novelists borrow popular literary conventions, however, they connect their writings to seminal literary and phil­ osophical texts. They also forge connections among each other, creating a collective (or 'generic') model of authorship that is not simply derivative. These novelists are connecting with each other over space and time via a market-driven system of exchange, the circulating-library novel. If their influence on each other is not as obvious and accessible as the personal intertextual exchanges attributed to canonized poets and their critics (such as Shelley's parody of Peter Be/0, Minerva authors communicate with each other through constant, often subtle modifications on and infrac­ tions of these popular formulas. These modifications come into view when the novels are read collectively and with a definition of intertextuality that is flexible enough to include a shared social text, or the popular turns of phrase and formulaic conventions that were readily available to practically any novelist. XXI

Preface A circle is exclusive - would-be participants are not always welcome. By contrast, Minerva's authorial community, which is constituted by a set of conventions with permeable boundaries, creates an inclusive network. That popular conventions might belong to everybody makes Romantics 'anxious', for reasons ranging from the political (e.g. the politics of who disseminates information) to the aesthetic (e.g. the politics of taste). Romantic exchange, and thus the shared circuit of production that connect Minerva novelists to now canonical authors, is best measured by analysing writers' use of popular conventions, a practice that restores Minerva novels' conversations with each other and with texts long assumed to be out of their class. It is hardly surprising that Minerva novelists, excluded from more traditional authorial circles, appear more cognizant of this exchange than the first-generation canonical authors featured in the study. To illustrate that Romantic exchange occurs at the level of convention, and that Minerva's influence extends beyond the novel market proper to the very authors most concerned about prolific print culture, I pair literary analysis with statistical analysis of publishing records for all British novels published between 1780 and 1829 (my dataset is compiled from James Raven and Peter Garside's The English Novel, 1770-1829:A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles and includes updates published in the Reports section of Romantic Textualities). I also examine material novels for paper quality and advertisements.27 This multi-faceted approach allows me to quantifY my argument about Minerva's authorial model, as Minerva novelists continue to publish well into the 1800s and 1810s, after the Press had been 'branded' a factory for cheap, formulaic novels." Many Minerva novelists publish only occasionally with Lane's famously prolific press. Of those Minerva novelists now identified either fully or by surname, most (78 per cent) publish more than one novel, and of these, most (73 per cent) publish with both Minerva and other presses, a point that has gone unmentioned in scholarship on Minerva and its novels. The publishing records allow a careful exploration of Minerva's shifting relationship to the novel market over the course of its growing influence through the mid- 1790s, as well as later in the 1800s and 1810s, when many authors who debuted with Minerva are still publishing, although XXll

Preface

often with other presses. It will be confirmed that Minerva is indeed important for female authors, but certain myths will be dispelled, such as Minerva's association with the signature 'by a lady'. Because the focus throughout is Minerva novelists' creative reuse of popular conventions and the ways that these conventions resurface in Romantic politics and poetics, the aim is not to uncover biograph­ ical information about specific authors.29 Rather, novels are discussed in order to illuminate suggestive patterns among clusters of novelists - those still unidentified, those who publish several novels within a brief window of time, and the long-term or career novelists who publish frequently over Minerva's run, sometimes exclusively with Minerva but more often in combination with other presses. By pairing the macroscopic lens of data analysis with the micro­ scopic lens of literary analysis, Chapter 1 rereads Minerva's rise, zenith and decline, and provides a way to reassess its novels' contri­ bution to and erasure from literary history30 Each of the book's three sections analyses Minerva novels in light of now canonical texts that influence debates in Britain over woman's nature (Section One) , the French Revolution and its impact on the British social order (Section Two) and Romantic redefinitions of authorship and literature (Section Three). Each section additionally demonstrates that these debates are inflected by the circulating-library novel's impact on the literary market and, in particular, on changing rela­ tions among readers, writers and critics. Sections consist of an introductory argument and two or three consecutive chapters, each ofwhich is a self-contained argument that gains additional meaning when read in relation to the entire section. These chapters are arranged chronologically, so as to chart Minerva's early rise, zenith and eventual decline, permitting a focus on how a popular genre changes over time. Early Minerva novels are best characterized as 'sentimental', a subgenre that by Minerva's zenith, roughly 1795-1802, takes on a notably ' providential' tone. Reflecting the rise of counter­ revolutionary sentiment in Britain, providential novels use fatalistic language to show that nobility is born, not bred. Minerva's provi­ dential novels recycle the gothic conventions popularized by Radcliffe (e.g. persecuted heroines, cases of mistaken identity, XXlll

Preface

mysterious manuscripts), substantiating the Press's reputation for trade gothics. Yet, contrary to critics' representations of Minerva authors as copyists of The Mysteries of Udolpho, most deviate from Radcliffe's model in important ways.31 My title phrase, 'Minerva's Gothics', acknowledges Minerva's reputation (then and now) for the gothic and the way that this critical signposting reflects emergent distinctions between high and low literature. Attesting to the power of this sign posting, I treat the gothic as a heuristic for Minerva's network as it operates in use - as 'mechanical' habits of mind that novelists both adapt to and alter over time. By the late 1800s and 1810s, Minerva's gothics are generic hybrids that read as microcosms of the larger network, summoning conventions popular through the Press's run. Section One considers how Wollstonecraft's 'feminist discern­ ment' in Wrongs both anticipates and deviates from Wordsworth's Romantic reaction to prolific print culture. Like Wordsworth, Wollstonecraft critiques the habits of mind that structure common­ place feelings - in this specific case, the fantasy of everlasting romantic love.Yet even as Wollstonecraft elevates herself above most authors, she only partially distances herselffrom the popular market. Arguing that Wollstonecraft writes of Minerva novelists in her preface but directs Wrongs to feminist revolutionaries like herself (e.g. Helen Maria Williams, Eliza Fenwick, Mary Hays) , I demon­ strate that Wollstonecraft turns the analytic lens on herself and her compatriots to show that they too buy into their own version of Minerva's romantic fantasy (radical reappraisals of what constitutes romantic love). Wollstonecraft curtails her vision to show that ever­ lasting romantic love remains an impossible dream, effectively making Wrongs a meta-discursive novel about responsible feminist authorship in an age of prolific print. Wollstonecraft's oft-noted disdain for 'feminine' novels sits uneasily with a cluster of sentimental novels Lane published in the second half of the 1780s, many of which are signed 'by a lady' or are otherwise associated with female authorship. Wollstonecraft reviewed some of these novels for the Analytical Review, and she is right to identifY romantic fantasy as the common property of novelists. Minerva novelists anticipate some ofWollstonecraft's rej oinders to the sexual double standard in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1791) but without XXIV

Preface

denigrating women's novels. By Minerva's zenith, some novelists even respond directly to Wollstonecraft by claiming an undiscerning model for feminist authorship. Rather than elevate their work above the greater majority, such novelists connect their novels to other feminine, reproductive novels, which they reappraise as a vehicle for feminist intervention. Section Two examines the circuit of production that connects Minerva novelists to the pamphlet debate incited by Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), with particular attention to William Godwin's summoning of this shared circuit in Things As They Are. In the early 1790s, Minerva novelists popularize the new 'providential' novel, a variation on the earlier sentimental novel. Children swapped at birth, shipwrecked infants, foundlings ­ the providential novel is built on the secret nobility of the hero or heroine.Yet this is an open secret: the hero's exceptional good looks and virtuous mind unsubtly signal his real identity to readers as does his pervasive feeling of discomfort when living as a commoner. If Minerva novelists take Burke 's counter-revolutionary sentiment even further than he does by treating the hero 's or heroine's feelings as innate, they tend also to suggest, along with Godwin, that 'noble' character is made and not born. Godwin, like Wollstonecraft, presumes that everyday novel readers use popular conventions without much thought, but when tailoring his political philosophy for a novel-reading public in 1794, he appears to learn from popular conventions as they operate in use. Godwin demonstrates (through his author-protagonist, Caleb Williams) that the author's capacity to persuade his readers requires that he potentially be changed in the process. While Godwin's self-representation in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) is shown to be analogous to Wordsworth's in the 1800/1802 Preface, when he treats providential conventions as an episteme that can provoke the author to a new point of view, Godwin anticipates Shelley's mature poetics. Section Three takes stock of Minerva's reputation for gothic novels to show their relationship to what I am calling the forgotten poetics of Romantic exchange. As the Minerva Press becomes conflated with the gothic novel, and as the gothic becomes another dark double to Romanticism, Minerva novelists treat both gothic conven­ tions and Romantic expressions of genius as opportunity for xxv

Preface

meta-commentary on their c ollective authorial model. After Minerva's zenith period, sentimental love resurfaces in its most intense, individualized form, now in conjunction with what I refer to as 'gothic habits ofmind', or writers' attention to how convention shapes possible narratives. Minerva novelists comment on their own authorial model by summoning the conventions of both poetic genius and the rhetoric of prolific print culture. To illustrate that Minerva's authorial model influences a forgotten Romantic poetics, I discuss two formative texts in canonical Romanticism:Wordsworth's 180011802 Preface and Shelley's 'A Defence of Poetry' (1821). Both Wordsworth and Shelley identifY spontaneity as central to the poet's most inspired verse. Whereas Wordsworth defines spontaneity as the result of the poet's own self-made habits of mind, Shelley suggests that poetic inspiration comes unbidden and to the poet's surprise. In identifYing the power of a shared social text on authors, Shelley draws from his experience as a young reader and writer of popular gothic novels. Shelley's own gothic efforts are compared to novels by prolific Minerva authors, confirming the enduring influence of Minerva after its declining output in the late 1800s and 1810s. Minerva's Gothics concludes by briefly revisiting John Stuart Mill's reference to Minerva in his influential 1833 essay, 'What is Poetry?' Canonical readings of this essay memorialize the Romantic Poet's turn inward from the market and have thereby obscured a less familiar Romanticism in Shelley's 'Defence': a 'spirit of the age' that shows the influence of Minerva's collective authorial model even as it helps to efface it.

XXVI

Notes 1

2 3

4

s

6

F or a history of the Press, see Dorothy Blakey; The Minerva Press: 1 790-1820 (London, 1939) , pp. 26-47; also Deborah McLeod, who reminds us that Minerva published more thanjust novels, 'The Minerva Press'(unpublishedPhD thesis, University 1997) , pp. 52-3. Blakey; The Minerva Press, p. 119. See Ina F erris, The Achievement ofLiterary Authority: Gender, History, and the Waverley Novels (Ithaca, 1991) ; Emma Clery, The Rise ofSupernatural Fienon, 1 762-1800 (Cambridge, 1995) ; Deirdre Shauna Lynch, The Economy of Character: Novels, Market Culture, and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago, 1998) ; Michael Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic: Genre, Reception, and Canon Formation (Cambridge, 2000) ; Matthew Grenby; The Anti-aJ cobin Revolution (Cambridge, 2001) ; Anthony Mandal, jane Austen and the Popular Novel: The Determined Author (Basingstoke, 2007) . Lucy Newlyn, Reading, Writing, and Romanticism:TheAnxiety ofReception (Oxford, 2000) . F or literature's Romantic redefinition, see Clifford Siskin, The Work of Writing: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1 700-1830 (Baltimore, 1998) , p. 6; also Paul Keen, The Crisis of Literature in the 1 790s: Print Culture and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1999) , p. 10. Ferris, The Achievement of Literary Authority, p. 43; also Sonia Hofkosh, 'The W riter's Ravishment: Women and the Romantic Author - the Example of Byron' , inAnne K. Mellor (ed. ) , Romanticism and Feminism (Bloomington, 1988) , p. 98. To work against the still-pervasive image of the solitary Romantic author, Andrew Winckles and Angela Rehbein add 'network' to current critical terminology and identify two types: ' groups of actual women who corresponded with and worked in community with each other' and 'networks of meaning, within which authors and texts that may not traditionally seem to have any connection with each other interacted and spoke in unexpected ways'; 'Introduction: "A Tribe of Authoresses"', in A. Winckles and A. Rehbein (eds) , Women's Literary Networks and Romanticism: 'A Tribe ofAuthoresses' (Liverpool, 2017) , p. 4 . Minerva's Gothics illwninates a third type of network: XXVll

Preface

7

s

9 10

11

12 13

14

15

16 17

Minerva novelists converse with other authors but indirectly, through popular formulas. F or reading formula as a sign of authorial commllllity, see Beth RappYOllllg, 'But are they any good? Women readers, formula fiction, and the sacralization of the literary canon' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Southern California, 1996) . F or discussion of and challenge to this aesthetic, see Sarah Zimmerman, Romanticism, Lyricism, and History (NewYork, 1999) . See in particular Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of the Copyright (Cambridge, 1993) ; Martha Woodmansee, The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History ofAesthetics (NewYork, 1994 ) ; Lee Erickson, The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the Industrialization of Publishing, 1 800-1 850 (Baltimore, 1996) ; William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge, 2004 ) ; Gamer, Romanticization, Self-Canonization, and the Business of Poetry (Cambridge, 2017) . St Clair, The Reading Nation, p. 161. Gamer, Romanticization, Self-Canonization, and the Business of Poetry, p. 3. Anis Bawarshi, Genre and the Invention of the Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition (Logan, 2003) , p. 4 5. Siskin, The Historicity of Romantic Discourse, p. 11. F or analysis of Romantic definitions of 'inspiration', see Timothy Clark, The Theory of Inspiration: Composition as a Crisis in Subjectivity in Romantic and Post-Romantic Writing (Manchester, 1997) . Others who track Romantic-era writers' use of formulaic conventions draw similar conclusions, such as Melissa Sodeman, who shows that when novelists like Charlotte Smith andAnn Radcliffe use fonnulaic conventions, they 'memorialize the literary-historical conditions of their writing'. See Sentimental Memorials: Women and the Novel in Literary History (Stanford, 2015) , p. 3. See in particular Newlyn, Reading, Writing, and Romanticism. Also Andrew Bennett, Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity (Cambridge, 1999) ; Scott Hess, Authoring the Self: Self-Representation, Authorship, and the Print Market in British Poetry from Milton through Wordsworth (Routledge, 2005) ; and Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic. Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic, pp. 90-4. F or the novelist as stamp, see Ferris, TheAchievement ofLiterary Authority, p. 43. XXVl11

Preface 18

19

20

21

22 23

24

'Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802) ', in Stephen Gill (ed. ) , William Wordsworth: The Major Works (Oxford, 2008) , p. 606. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights ofMen, ed. Janet Todd (Oxford, 1993) , p. 225. Author's preface, in Mary and The Wrongs of Woman (Oxford, 2009) , p. 66. Godwin makes this point in a footnote to the text, Mary and The Wrongs of Woman, p. 177. Shelley, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne (Peterborough, Ont. , 2002) , p. 215. See Harriet Guest, Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1 7501810 (Chicago, 2000) , p. 15. See Marilyn Butl er, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford, 1975) ; Gary Kelly, The English Jawbin Novel: 1 780-1805 (Oxford, 1976) ; Grenby; The Anti-Jacobin Novel; MiriamWallace, Revolutionary Subjects in the English Jawbin' Novel, 1 790-1805 (Lewisburg, 2009) . There are important exceptions, the seminal ones being McLeod's annotations of dozens of Minerva novels in 'The Minerva Press', Edward Copeland's contention that in contrast to Austen, Minerva novelists 'examine economic threats that lie in wait for heroines drawn from lower ranks of middle life' (see Women Writing about Money: Women's Fienon in England, 1 790-1820 (Cambridge, 1995) , p. 43) and Jennie Batchelor's analysis of Minerva novels in light of authors' purported financial difficulties (see 'The Claims of Literature:WomenApplicants to the Royal Literary Fund, 1790-1810', Women's Writing, 12/3 (2003) , 505-20) . F or a wave of recent studies inspired by the above, see Hannah Doherty Hudson, 'Robert Bage's Novel Merchandise: Commercialism, Gender, and F orm in Late Eighteenth-Century Fiction', 9 (2012) , 171-92; also 'Sentiment and the Gothic: F ailures of Emotion in the Novels of Mrs Radcliffe and the Minerva Press', in Albert]. Rivero (ed. ) , The Sentimental Novel in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, forthcoming) ; Christina Morin, The Gothic Novel in Ireland, 1 760-1829 (Manchester, 2018) ; also Christina Morin and Marguerite Corporaal, 'Irish Gothic Goes Abroad: Cultural Migration, Materiality, and the Minerva Press', in ChristinaMorin and Marguerite Corporaal (eds) , Traveling Irishness in the Long Nineteenth Century (New York, 2017) , pp. 195-203; Anthony Mandal, 'Mrs Meeke and the Minerva: The Mystery of the Marketplace', Eighteenth-Century Life, XXIX

Preface

4212 (2018), 130-50; El izabeth Neiman, 'A New Perspective on the l'vlinerva Press's "Derivative" Novels: Authorizi ng Borrowed 1v1aterial', European Romantic Review, 26/5 (October 2015), 633-58; Yael Shapira, 'Beyond the Radclifef F onnula: Isabel la Kel ly and the Gothic Troubles of the Married Heroine', Women's Writing (26 November 2015), https:ll www. tandfonline.comldoilful/! 1 0 . 1 080109699082 . 2 0 1 5. 1 1 10289. Retr ieved 30 September 2015;also,Inventing the Gothic Corpse: the Thrill

ofHuman Remains in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (NewYork, 2018). z,

NigelCross, The Common Writer: Life in Nineteenth-Century Grub Street (Cambridge, 1985), p. 170; also Batchelor, 'The Claims of Literature',

p. 507. 26

Zl

28

29

My sample comes primarily from the Chawton H ouse Library but also includes novels from the NewYork Society Library and the University of Minnesota. I examined ninety-one novels in tota l: two fr om 1780--4; thirteen from 1785-9; sixteen from 1790-4; thirty-one from 1795-1802; thirteen from 1803-11 ; eleven from 1812-1820; and five from 1820-9. F or a point of comparison, I also examined a smaller selection of novels published by other booksellers (fifty-four in total) , including Hookham and Noble as wel l as the more respectable Longman. le slie Goochn an suggests that Minerva was not'branded' by critics until at least 1803 (this is arOlmd the ti me that critics began denigrati ngMinerva when reviewing indv i idual the 2011 meeti ng of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies,Vancouver, British Colwnbia, 17-20 March. The'branding' prob­ ably started even earlier, as suggested by this review of Ellen Rus/iford: 'a disti nguishing characteristi c of the pro ducti ons from theMinenu Press [is] namely the frivolous 14. For a quantitative analysis of how contemporary reviews shaped Minerva's recepti on in its day and ours, see Megan Peiser, 'William Lane and the Minerva Press in the Review Periodical, 1790-1820', inRomantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1 780-1 840 (forthcoming, 2019) F or biographical infonnation on select Minerva novelists, see Virginia Blain et al., The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writersfrom the Middle Ages to The Present (New Haven, 1990); also The Orlando Project, Unv i ersity org. Retrieved 30 March 2017. Devoney Looser cal ls for scholars to use 'large-scale patterns that big data helps us to notice' to write new biographies for period writers; xxx

Preface

30

'British Women W riters, Big Data and Big Biography, 1780-1830', Women's Writing, 22/2 (2015), 165. Given the nwnbers of still uniden­ tified Romantic-era wr iters, we should also use big data when analysing corpora of texts like Minerva's, and for two reasons: to justify our selection process and to provide alternatives to research models stil l reliant on a Romantic preoccupation with the 'sole' author. As often as not, the novel's protagonist is male. Gothic conventions also often read more as backdrop or scenery than as fuel for the main narrative - which, in many cases, is set in England in contemporary times. Novels that more closely align with Radcliffe's are often by some of the best-known Minerva authors, such as Eleanor Sleath's The Orphan of the Rhine or Regina Maria Roche's Children of the Abbey - probably why today Minerva is so often associated with Radcliffe's model.

XXXI

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1

Rem apping Minerv a 's Influence on the Novel Market

The aim is not so much a change in the canon - the discovery of precursors to the canon or alternatives to it, to be restored to a prominent position - as a change in how we look at all of literary history: canonical and non-canonical: together. (F ranco Moretti) 1

The lines ofinfluence drawn among canonical authors by conven­ tional literary histories tend to leave vast territories marked 'incognita', not of interest except insofar as they emphasize the links already determined important. Even as the considerable territory Minerva occupied is beginning to be sketched in and its influence on literary history is beginning to be understood, its novels remain a blur, individually inconsequential. Having put Minerva on the map, as it were, we assume we know the novels already. Different maps, though, can help us see a territory differ­ ently, even without erasing lines already drawn for good reason, such as so-called prolific print culture's connection to Wordsworth's Romantic anxiety. Here is what the existing maps show: they tell us, accurately enough, that from the late 1780s,William Lane's Leadenhall Street Press opened doors for relatively obscure female novelists, many of whom were unlikely to have published novels otherwise. They also illustrate that by the early 1800s, Minerva was 'branded' as a factory for cheap, formulaic novels,2 while also implying that most of these novels are justly forgotten. Although this chapter begins

Minerva's Gothics

with these same details, it introduces methods for a more accurate reading of Minerva novels. Moretti is right: 'distant reading' does allow a different understanding ofliterary history,3 but this chapter balances distant and close readings. Like Moretti, I look at publish­ ing records, some of which reveal fractal relationships to the 1 60-year span ofrecords (1740-1900) that he has already charted ' A narrower focus on the Minerva Press, however, reveals patterns that can only be satisfactorily illuminated by zooming in for a close analysis of individual novels in order to attend to the ways that novelists mobilize borrowed material. In this way, a productive compromise is struck between strictly data-oriented approaches to literary history and a c omplete reliance on scholarly intuition to make reasoned arguments about large collections of texts. As I illustrate throughout this book, the data inform my selection process of individual novels. Chapter 1 begins with an analysis of the publishing records to provide a clearer view of Minerva's impact on the literary market and on debuting female authors in particular.5 Certain common­ places will be contested, such as the representation of Minerva novelists as a discrete group who publish exclusively with William Lane (or his successor, Anthony King Newman, who partnered with Lane in 1803 and ran the Press after Lane retired in 18096). Recognizing the Minerva novelist as a category, yet not a fixed one, will provide suggestive hints about Minerva's emergent autho­ rial community in the late 1780s and early 1790s as well as its continued influence in the later 1800s and 181Os, even as its market share diminishes. I provide dates that will then be shown to corre­ spond with key moments in these authors' c onstruction of Minerva's collective authorial model. Novelists will be seen inter­ acting dynamically with the Romantic redefinitions of literature and authorship that their so-called 'prolific' production helps to inspire. These interactions make the larger collection of their novels more available for rereading.

2

Remapping Minerva's Influence

1:1 Bringing the Data to Scale: Analysing a 'Minerva' Effect on the Novel Market As Lisa Gitelman reminds us, 'raw data is an oxymoron.'7 Data must be rendered legible before they can answer questions: categories must be developed, defined and populated. In arranging these categories, my first concern was to correct the relatively narrow selection of authors on which most Minerva scholarship relies. Researchers generally draw either from Austen's list of'horrid novels' in Northanger Abbey or Dorothy Blakey's list of the best-selling Minerva authors from a 1798 prospectus.s While these selections are an important measure of some of Minerva's most popular conventions and themes, attending to a wider range of novels nominates others for a closer read. For this reason, I started with Garside, Raven and Schowerling's magisterial two-volume compilation of publishing records for all British novels published between 1770 and 1829 (I include the most recent updates and corrections to the data for the 1800 to 1829 period by Garside,Jacqueline Belanger,Anthony MandaI and Sharon Regaz9). Records include each novel's place of publication and the name of the publisher, as well as the author's name when known, any further editions and translations, excerpts from critical reviews, and any remaining questions about authorial attribution. A second concern when organizing the data was how to query Minerva's impact over time. Lane christened his Press 'Minerva' in 1790, but because I wanted to track Lane's initial impact on the novel market, my analysis starts with 1780, when he began publish­ ing novels with some regularity.1O To calculate which patterns, if any, hold for novelists who debut late in Minerva's run, the analysis concludes in 1829, nine years after Lane's successor Newman dropped the name Minerva from the Press (novels for 1821-9 are included in the dataset only if the novelist published sometime within my census period, 1780 to 1820)." Whereas initially I started by mapping novelists' production per decade, I became suspicious that the 'decade' frame occluded more than it revealed. By calcu­ lating the number of novelists (both Minerva and those who publish only with other presses) to both debut and publish per year, the following periods emerged:

3

Minerva's Gothics 1780-4 1785-9 1790-4 1795-1802 1803-11 1812-20

Lane a minor player in the market Lane's early rise prior to christening the Press 'Minerva' in 1790 Minerva an obvious player in the market Minerva's domination of the market or zenith period Minerva's initial decline Minerva's continued decline

To query Minerva's impact on obscure, still unidentified authors, as well as to ascertain now identified novelists' relationships to the Press over its run, I organized all novelists (Minerva and otherwise) into six categories:

Minerva men Minerva women Minerva gender unknown Other men Other women Other gender unknown

Total 64 150 112 298 345 336

I then factored in additional data, such as dates for each author's novels and whether each particular novel was published anony­ mously, by name, pseudonym or with an authorial signature, such as 'by a lady'.While this information was often a simple transcrip­ tion from the publishing records, sometimes additional calculations were required, such as the total number of novels each novelist published between 1780 and 1829, how many of these novels were published with Minerva, and whether or not an author debuted with Minerva. Organizing the data in this way raises two questions, the first being what is meant by 'male' or 'female' author. To be sure, from today's perspective male and female are not self-evident catego­ ries. As contemporary critics themselves often wryly noted, female signatures do not necessarily mean female authors (some 'by a lady' novels were certainly by men). Even those authors now identified by name are often listed only by honorifics, like the Minerva authors Miss Pilkington, Miss Taylor and Mrs Carver. In 4

Remapping Minerva's Influence

some cases, the link between the name and the actual identity of the author is especially tenuous. For example, as Don Shelton has recently speculated, '" Mrs Carver" may have been a nom de plume for the surgeon Sir Anthony Carlisle.'12 I take names and honorifics at face value by listing novelists either as female or male, while acknowledging the possibility of satirical or strategic gender-bending. The second question is what c onstitutes a 'Minerva novelist'. After all, many Minerva authors frequent other publishers and some publish only a minority of their novels with Minerva. Though the publishing records analysed here have been available since 2000, this study is the first to my knowledge that culls them for differences among Minerva and non-Minerva novelists. In determining who should be counted as a Minerva novelist I use two measures: inclusive and exclusive. The 'inclusive' measure includes all novelists who ever publish with Minerva and the 'exclusive ' includes only those novelists who publish with Minerva within a specific period, such as during the Press's initial rise in the early 1790s. A novelist may be a ' Minerva novelist' by the first measure and yet be counted in the 'other' tally for a particular period of time. Unless stated otherwise, I rely on the inclusive frame, both because the data suggest that Minerva plays a special role as a gateway to publishing (more than 70 per cent of novelists who publish with Minerva at some point debuted there) , and because so many - in comparison to their non-Minerva c ounter­ parts - continue publishing novels. Some prolific Minerva novelists publish exclusively with Lane, avoiding his imitators either from loyalty or necessity. For others (like Amelia Opie, who debuted with Lane in 1790), success with Minerva appears to have opened more renowned doors like Longman's.13 Surely not a11 novelists who avoided the infamously prolific Leadenhall Street Press were financially better off or in higher social circles than their Minerva counterparts, but we ought to keep in mind Edward Copeland's portrayal of Minerva novels as a type, distinguishable from novels by more ' genteel' authors.14 My data show that Minerva novelists typically have a different publishing profile from that of other novelists, and that these differences are most pronounced among female authors. Indeed, a Minerva effect in the market is correlated 5

Minerva's Gothics

to gender with only female Minerva novelists publishing in high enough numbers to impact data for all women novelists (men who publish with Minerva are too small a proportion of the sum total of male novelists to have a similar effect). As the data c onfirm Minerva's particular impact on female novelists, male authors function primarily as a point of comparison in the larger discussion. The data on all still-unidentified authors introduce further c omplexities. Any such author who publishes more than one novel will have been counted more than once by my tally if the novels are not linked together on the title page, e.g. 'by the author of . . .'15 Moreover, these attributions are not always trustworthy. Take, for example, The Woman of Colour, published by Black, Parry and Kingsbury in 1808. This novel, the subject of a recent wave of critical discussion about portrayals of race in the eighteenth­ century novel (and which I examine at some length in Section Three), is associated by attribution to Minerva's The Aunt and Niece (1804), along with two other novels, one by the prolific Minerva author, Mrs E. M. Foster. However, two later Minerva novels, Substance and Shadow; or the Fisherman's Daughter of Brighton (1812) and The Revealer of Secrets; or the House thatJack Built (1817), which also enlist these novels , do not mention The Woman if Colour. Peter Garside suggests that this chain implausibly links some twenty-odd novels and three authors, including the prolific Foster, and is an illustration of the way that authors and publishers alike exploited the potential for confusion when trying to sell otherwise unknown quantities. 16 We can speculate that Minerva has some selling power when other publishers enlist its novels , especially those associated with prolific authors. To correct for the complexities introduced by unidentified authors, I exclude them from calculations that query patterns and/ or distinctions among male and female Minerva novelists and those novelists who never publish with the Press.17 In these cases, my calculations include four authorial categories (because some uniden­ tified novelists sign with gender identifiers , these categories include fewer numbers than the initial tally). As before, my census period is 1780 to 1820, with my records extending to 1829 for those novelists who publish in that period: 6

Remapping Minerva's Influence Total Minerva men Minerva women non-Minerv a men non-Minerv a women

55 112 231 233

With this inclusive definition of the Minerva author, we see that nearly one in three women novelists publish with Minerva, but only one in five men do. The Minerva novelist so defined will help us ascertain the Press's continued influence over its run, -with the caution­ ary note that the few prolific novelists who publish with Minerva only once and early in its run are not typica1.1s It should also be kept in mind that the time periods measured are not a11 equal. Minerva obviously publishes more authors at its zenith period than, say, between 1790 and 1794, because this compares an eight-year period to a five­ year one. However, since my analysis is always Minerva's relation to the larger print market, the important point is the distinction between two categories (usually Minerva's female novelists and those who publish with other presses). These distinctions confirm that Minerva remains an influence on the market well into the late 1800s and 1810s. I use a statistical tool known as Fisher's Exact Test to analyse my findings. Fisher's is designed to test the significance ofthe association between the proportions of two categories relative to a total popu­ lation. Significance is a measure ofthe likelihood that the association could have occurred by random fluctuation and is represented with a 'p-value'. Fisher's, like most statistical analyses, assigns p = � 0.05 as 'significant'; that is, there is at most a 5 per cent chance that a result was a consequence of sampling error instead ofa real difference between the two proportions that were compared. Likewise, a p value of � 0.01 is considered 'extremely significant, since the like­ lihood that the result was random is 1 per cent or less' .19 Fisher's Exact Test finds it highly unlikely that female novelists randomly publish with Minerva in higher numbers than men: 1 1 2 out of345 (32 per cent) offemale novelists are Minerva novelists, in comparison to just 55 out of 286 (20 per cent) male ones, with p being< O.Ol. Unless otherwise stated, these analyses all achieve the p 0.05), they are still in the predicted direction. These analyses, while providing new details about Minerva's rise, zenith and decline, do not so much contradict what we already know about the Press than indicate that the previously known facts delimit what we are able to see of Minerva's influence, both on its authors and on literary history more generally. This is a testable hypothesis, to be later c onfirmed by analysis of Minerva's larger network of novels. A 'Minerva Effect' on the Market as it Correlates to Gender

To begin with a general observation about the data, Minerva's effect on the market through much of its run is concealed by the broader category of gender. To take an obvious example, there are 345 female novelists and just 286 male ones. However, as figure 1 . 1 shows, without Minerva (inclusively defined) , the numbers of publishing male and female novelists from the early 1790s through Minerva's zenith period would be nearly equal: 233 women to 231 men. Fig. 1 . 1 : Differentiating between a 'gender' and a 'Minerva' effect in publication records

160 140

-All female novelists

120 100

-All male novelists

80 60

-Female novelists, Minerva subtracted

40

from the total

20

-Male novelists, Minerva subtracted from the total

8

Remapping Minerva's Influence

Additionally, figure 1 . 1 bears on a feature of the data that will surprise no one familiar with the Press's reputation: Minerva novel­ ists are indeed more prolific on average than other novelists. To gauge differences among Minerva and non-Minerva authors in terms of output, I created four subcategories, ranging from the 'one-novel author' to the 'six-plus novel author', the latter ofwhich I settled on as a measure of prolific production.20 Female Minerva and non-Minerva authors differ significantly both in the one-novel and six-plus novel author categories (in both cases, p is< 0.01). This distinction holds for male novelists, though Minerva men (along with other male novelists) publish fewer novels on average than their female counterparts: Table 1 . 1 Ratio of felllale novelists, categorized by 'type', 1780-1829

i -novel author 2-novel author 3-S -novel author 6+ -novel author

Minerva

Other

1 1 1 1

> 1 in 2 1 in 5 1 in 5 1 in 14

in 5 in 5 in 4 in 3

Table 1 . 2 : Ratio of lll ale novelists, categorized by 'type', 1780-1829

i -novel author 2-novel author 3-S -novel author 6+ -novel author

Minerva

Other

1 1 1 1

2 1 1 1

in 4 in 7 in 3 in 5

in 3 in 6 in 6 in 20

Female novelists are significantly more prolific than men, when measured by the 6 + -novel author category, but this is primarily a Minerva phenomenon. There is, in other words, no gender effect on the market when it comes to the prolific novelist until we add Minerva novelists into the equation. Although novelists who 9

Minerva's Gothics

publish with Minerva are fewer than those who do not, their high rate of publication - often over more than one period in Minerva's run - means that they appear more frequently in my calculations than their less prolific counterparts, as figure 1 . 2 suggests: Fig. 1 . 2 Numbers of publishing female and male Minerva novelists per period, inclusively and exclusively defined

70 �--

60

+-------��-

_ Mine rva female

so

+-------��--�

defi nition)

40

+-----,fl-��--�- - Mine rva female

novelists (inclusive

novelists (exclusive

defi nition) -Mine rva male novelists (incl usive definition) 10

-M inerva male novelists (excl usive defi nition)

Comparison of figures 1 . 1 and 1 . 2 shows the utility of meas­ uring Minerva authorship both inclusively and exclusively. Fewer female Minerva authors publish novels from 1803 to 1 8 1 1 than at the Press's zenith, whether with Minerva or else­ where, but the decline is subtle. The more striking decline is in the number of Minerva novelists who publish with Minerva. Between 1803 and 1 8 1 1 , Minerva novelists are more apt than in previous periods to publish elsewhere, most notably with Longman (a distinct step 'up' from Minerva), but also with other publishers, including Hookham, Crosby, Hughes and Colburn. Even though a third of these novelists were yet to publish with Minerva, two-thirds debuted with Minerva or else published with the Press during its zenith period. Although we cannot 10

Remapping Minerva's Influence

confidently rule out chance (p in this case is >0.05), novelists' turn to other presses in the second half of the 1800s suggests that Minerva's hold on the market is beginning to weaken in the face of a more stratified market and the entry of new competitors like Hughes and Colburn. Still, Minerva continues to influence the novel market in other ways, as discussed below, with particular attention to the following three patterns in the data: first, the apparent importance of anonymity, and in particular a female identifier such as'by a lady', in the early years of Lane's rise in the market; second, dispro portionately high numbers of female Minerva novelists who debut during the Press's zenith period; third, 'persistence', or Minerva novelists' continued presence in the market from period to period, most notably in the mid- to late 1800s. Minerva's Early Rise and a Female Signature

We know that women's novel production spikes in the mid- to late 1780s, at which point female novelists outnumber men,21 though it appears that Lane did not hold any special appeal for female authors at this time. From 1785 to 1789, about 20 per cent of both male and female novelists are publishing with Lane. By contrast, from 1790 to 1794, the same can be said for 37 per cent offemale novelists but just 16 per cent of their male counter­ parts. Data on still unidentified novelists, however, suggest that before Minerva's obvious impact on women authors becomes detectable, Lane appears to have welc omed (and perhaps culti­ vated) a female signature. As Edward Jacobs has taught us, late eighteenth-century circulating-library publishers (generally newcomers to the publishing business) favoured anonymous novels and, in particular, the signature 'by a lady'.22 But one of my most surprising findings is that while Jacobs's thesis holds for Minerva in its early years , a different pattern emerges in the early 1790s when non-Minerva novelists c ontinue to sign 'by a lady' at a significantly higher rate than their Minerva counterparts, as illustrated by figure 1 .3: 11

Minerva's Gothics Fig. 1 . 3 Percentage of unidentified novelists who sign 'by a lady', 1780-1820 35% 30%

.......

25% 20% 15%

"' \

/ \ "-

-Minerva

\ " "\ \.... ""

10% 5% 0%

-Other

By the 1800s, novelists are abandoning 'by a lady' , a trend that, as figure 1.4 shows, is substantiated by the data on female novelists, Fig. 1.4 Percentage of female novelists who sign 'by a lady', 1785-1820 40% 35% 30%

\',-----------+----� ,-----------------------------

+---\

25%

+-----�-------------------------------

20%

+---\----------

15%

', +--::,--'-- k\ ----------

+-----��t_--------------------------� 5% t----''\-:7'''' .... ':: �,----O% � -� ��:---��==�=:�

10%

1785-9

'" �� 1790-4

1795-1802

1803-11

12

1812-20

-Minerva -Other

Remapping Minerva's Influence

only one of whom publishes as 'by a lady' between 1790 and 1794.23 The other fifty-six publishing female novelists in that period opt out. By Minerva's zenith period, 'by a lady' appears to have lost its cachet.24 On this convention, at least, Minerva authors find them­ selves in the vanguard. Even so, anonymity remains an important feature of the Minerva novel, especially at the Press's zenith, when female authors are significantly more likely to publish anonymously than those women who never choose Minerva. There are, however, other factors involved that, if not accounted for, can distort the overall picture, such as output. For example, repeat novelists in particular move back and forth between anonymity and self­ identification. Moreover, when anonymity is calculated by period, rather than by a novelist's total output, all novelists are less and less likely to publish anonymously in each subsequent period apart from a brief resurgence in 1812-20 among non-Minerva novelists. As figure 1.5 illustrates, this resurgence is more pronounced when male authors are taken into account: Fig. 1 . 5 Percentage of novelists to publish anonymously, per period 120% �-----

100%

t---.r---

80%

�I-�-----

60%

•

Female Mi nerva

•

Female Other

. Male Minerva

• Male Other

40%

20%

0% 1785-9

1790-4 1795-1802 1803-11

13

1812-20

Minerva's Gothics

According to Peter Garside, by the 1810s,Walter Scott's success in publishing anonymous novels reflected but also helped to engender 'broader divisions taking place within the fic tion industry' from the 'essentially new phenomenon of the up-market best-selling novel' to the appearance of a new class of male novel readers, or at least men who would now admit to reading them." Simultaneously, the 'new-style quarterlies' (the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews) featured lengthy reviews of select literary texts and professed 'broad distaste for the common "female " novel'.26 As anonymity characterizes the vanguard once again in the Regency period, only female Minerva novelists remain in the rearguard, or perhaps it could be said that only they resist this particular trend. Statistical analysis surfaces patterns in an otherwise overwhelming heap ofpublishing records. Records from the mid-1780s to the early 1790s show that Minerva's early impact on the market was largely due to anonymous and, in many cases, still unidentified novelists, making it harder to justifY what has been current practice in discussion of Minerva, when the novels are discussed at all - attention to the most prolific or 'best-selling' novelists. By Minerva's zenith period, the publishing records identifY female authors of two types to which we should attend closely. Minerva regulars like Elizabeth Meeke and Eliza Parsons are of course one type, but they should be joined by obscure authors like Miss Pilkington and Miss Taylor, both ofwhom publish exclusively with Minerva over a short period of time. More so than writers who publish with both Lane and other presses, these authors appear to be beneficiaries of Lane's open-door policy and possibly might not have published but for Minerva. Minerva's Zenith Period and the Debuting Female Novelist

Mary Ann Hanway debuted with Minerva in 1798 with Elinor: or the World as it is; the dedication of her second novel, Andrew Stuart, or the Northern lM1nderer (also a Minerva publication) to her husband suggests pride in her work. While 72 per cent of all female Minerva novelists debut with the Press, along with a comparable proportion of their male counterparts (71 per cent) , figure 1.7 shows that Minerva plays a particularly significant role for all female novelists at its zenith period of 1795-1802. One of every two female novelists to debut in this period publishes at some point with Lane (the same 14

Remapping Minerva's Influence

Fig. 1.6 Author's signature from Mary Ann Hanway's Andrew Stuart, or the Northern Wanderer (1800)

A N D [� E W

S T U A RT,

.. ,..

);'OIlTUF.II;o1 \1 \xm:llI:Jt

" , o r � " , M � ' '''- '' '' . .-,. .. " " .... M 'n � .. ,.,

...

.

Fig. 1.7 Numbers of all debut female novelists, 1780-1820

80

"I "

" 60

I I J..

" " 30 20

W

debutwith Minerva

_Minerva noveWsts wh 0

//Y- '\.

0

".if'

.0.05. The Minerva effect the Press has enjoyed throughout its run has by now dissipated. At the same time, one trend persists: of the nine debuting female novelists in the 1810s who publish six or more novels by 1829, seven (or 78 per cent) are Minerva authors.27 Fig. 1 . 8 The rarity of the single-novel author: a 'Minerva effect' dissipates in 1812-1820

80% 70%

./

60%

./ I

I I / ....... I

50% 40% 30% 20%

-

10%

Female Minerva i-novel authors

Female Other i-novel authors

0% 1785-9

1790-4

1795-02 1803-11

1812-20

These markers of Minerva's decline probably reflect the effects of Minerva's 'branding' by critics, as well as changes at the Press itself These include Newman's increased willingness to publish juvenile fiction, a decline in overall OUtput,2S and, as I observed uIX'n examining ninety-one preserved copies of Minerva novels at various archives, flatly misleading advertising regarding 'new' titles. Early in Minerva's run, Lane used multiple strategies to advertise novels, but most of the publications he offered for sale were just a year or two old, at least by their publication dates.29 By 1820 Newman was listing novels from 17

Minerva 's Gothies

1809 and 1810 as 'new' .These lists seem to have been recycled from similar ads in earlier novels, dating five or more years earlier (compare, for example, ads from Patience and PerseveralUe, 1813, to The Contested Election and Italian Mysteries, both 1820 publications3(l). Moreover, as early as 1813, Newman was including in his long lists of'new' publi­ cations novels published elsewhere (for example, 44 per cent, or twenty-six offifty-nine tides listed in PatielUe and PerseveralUe, are not .Minerva tides at

all). He also bought

remaindered stock from other

publishers and republished them as .Minerva tides31 though in some cases, a .Minerva reprint may have led an author to select .Minerva in the next round, most notably Anne Hatton, whose 1810 debut noveL Cambrian Pictures; or Everyone has Errors was reprinted by .Minerva in 1813. Hatton published eleven additional novels in the next fifteen years, all vvith Newman. Newman also begins a lower-quality paper stock (its thinness and susceptibility to ink-bleed through are clearly obvious in the follovving Figs), as compared to the samples from both .Minerva's zenith and from other publishers in the late 1810s:32 Fig. 1.9 Paper sample, Minerva 1799

;l:-uz �

..-.. "

h "-"'"-'

.

BELMONT LODGE. A NOVEL. IN 'I/PO P O L U M E �.

B A R R I E ',· Source: From Harriet Jones's Bebnont Lodge 18

S, JON ,' E .

Remapping Minerva's Infiueme

Fig. 1.10 Paper sample, Minerva 1820

TIlE C1UJSAD£1l!..

m:U1�lYlbllt

29

still, he strove in vain : and

after an ineffectual combat of nearly half the n.ight, he quilled the nrsellal of tile­ h'llllies, ",ilhout the ruther

of

BamdO\l\

lah. ,.

c,

CHAP·

Source: From Louisa Sidney Sunhope's The Crusaders. An Historical

Romana, of the Twelf!h

Century.

19

Minerva's Gothies

Fig. 1.11 Paper sample, Colburn 1818

OF OF WONDE n. OF SENTIMENT.

Z E L I S: AN INDIAN TALE,

A

rcjleclion

CHAPTER I.

by wa.1J of introduction to the /tislor,y, - JIIIouerate wis/les. Their _

termination. A deallt .bed.

-

Instru.ction to youth.­

1.1 AN 1S . a stran

ge

assemblage of passio n! and of re.1 S011. Passions. says the wise mUll ure the d·1senses . ' 0f tIle soul. 15 the reason remed r Y or them Since, then, for a tllousand acute d' ,

of Jut I

One

lSeases We ure po5ses�ed

Source: From Anne and Annabella Plumptre's Tales and

if Sentiment.

20

if Wonder, ifHumour,

Remapping Minerva's Influence

Fig. 1.12 Paper sample, Longman, Rees, Orme and Brown 1819

,

My

young friends all _ute � 'II

one ever reads a preface, .h.... .h..• WlIM is but labour lost, and the papet printing. an unnecessary expense I wIIIIi my elderly ones gravely assert, that •

preface g:iV�8 respectability to a wo.rJr ; Source: FromAnne Raikes Harding's Decision (Longman, Hu�t,Rees, Orme and Brown, 1819)

Despite this material evidence of .Minerva's decline, the data suggest that .Minerva's influence should be measured broadly as we take stock of novelists who debuted or published at .Minerva's zenith and who continued to publish in the mid- to late-1800s and 1810s. PersistelUe as a Measure for Minerva's Continued Influence Post-zenith According to Raven, the best measure of a Romantic-era novel's success may be its numbers of subsequent editions, given that most novels were published in small editions (500 was typical) and rarely reprinted." While prolific publication is probably an indicator of financial need and commercial demand, examining persistence allows us to develop a sense of novelists' relationship to the market over time, assuming that these novelists would carry 21

Minerva's Gothies

something of their previous experiences (including changes in the market itself) to the next novel. Even as the Press itself begins to show signs of decline, Minerva's influence can still be glimpsed in the proportion of its novelists who still publish, whether with Minerva or other presses - a hypothesis to be later tested by literary analysis. To measure persistence so-defined required two calculations. First, I calculated numbers for all female novelists in my census group to publish two or more novels between

1780

and

1829.

I

then restricted the list to only those authors who publish over two or more time periods (these periods need not be consecutive) : sixty-six Minerva novelists and sixty-nine who publish only vvith other preS'>es. This allows

us

to compare novelists who have more

similar publishing profiles than the average Minerva novelist and her non-Minerva counterpart. Finally, I used two tests: one, the percentage of each group of novelists to publish from one period to the next - to measure direct persistence (see figure

1 .13); two,

sheer numbers - to gauge when one group of novelists literally outnumbers the other (see figure

1 . 14).

Fig. 1.13 Percentage of 2+ 'persistent' female novelists who publish from one period to the next

120%

•

Minerva

• Other

17'10-4

17'15-1802

1803-11

22

1812-20

1821-'1

Remapping Minerva's Influence Fig. 1.14 Numbers of 2+ female 'persistent' novelists who publish in each particular period

60

�-----

50

+-----==--�

40

+-----

30

+------

20

+------

. M inerva [lather

10

o 1785-9

1790-4

1795-1802 1803-11 1812-20

1821-29

Both tests illustrate higher rates ofMinerva's persistence over nearly its entire run, even for novelists with a similar profile. Not only are 2+ Minerva novelists more apt to publish from one period to the next than their non-Minerva c ounterparts, but they literally outnumber the latter until 1812-20. In both cases, Fisher's verifies the significance of Minerva's higher rate of persistence during 1803-1 1 , a period that we have already flagged as one where the market appears more stratified. Minerva's high rate of persistence through its early decline suggests that by the early 1800s, Minerva's influence extends beyond location. Novelists who had already published with Minerva - and who perhaps would never have published at all if not for the infamously accommodating press continue to publish between 1803 and 1811 with both Minerva and elsewhere, suggesting that a Minerva effect had infiltrated the larger market. Further evidence for this effect could be that between 1812-20, publishing records for other female 2+ 'persistent' novelists look a great deal like those for Minerva throughout its run, a trend confirmed by Fisher's: for both tests, p >0.05. 23

Minerva's Gothies

As persistence rates are substantially down for all female novelists between 1820 and 1829, they square with what we already know about the masculinizing of the market. Figures 1 . 1 5 and 1 . 1 6 indi­ cate that persistence rates for male non-.Minerva novelists are at their height between 1820 and 1829, both when measured by percentage and by number. Notably, these male authors are not assisted here by their .Minerva counterparts, who, like female .Minerva novelists, are on the decline:3(

Fig. 1.15 Persistence rate for all novelists, by percentage

120%

100%

80"/0

+.,;----tllf---

• Female Minerva • Female Other

60"/0

• Male Minerva • Male Other

40"/0

20"/0

1790-4

1795-1802 1803-11

1812-20

1821-9

There is a final point to make. Recall that we began by comparing like categories: sixty-six persistent female .Minerva novelists to their sixty-nine non-.Minerva counterparts. When we return to the total numbers of all female novelists, persistent or otherwise, even .Minerva's period of obvious decline reveals an enduring influence

on the novel market. From 1812 to 1820, a full third of all female novelists to ever publish with .Minerva (39 of 112, or 35 per cent) are persistent. The same holds for less than a fifth (41 of233, or 18 per cent) of female non-.Minerva novelists, with p being< 0.01. There is no similar effect among male novelists, though there was 24

Remapping Minerva's Influence Fig. 1.16 Persistence rate for all novelists, by numbers

60 ,-----

50

+-

40

+------If--

---=�--

30

+------I=--

20

+----

• Female Minerva [] Female Other . MaleMinerva

• MaleOther

10

o 1785-9

1790-4 1795-1802 1803-11 1812-20

1821-9

one between 1803 and 1811 .35 In either case, male Minerva novelists do not publish in high enough numbers to significantly influence the totals for all male novelists. From both 1803-1 1 and 1812-20, the proportion of persistent female novelists from my census period significantly exceeds that for male novelists - until, that is, Minerva novelists are excluded from the calculation. This Minerva effect disappears between 1821 and 1829.When proportions ofall persis­ tent male and female novelists are calculated, p >0.05, whether or not Minerva novelists are included in the tally. The statistical markers verifY that between 1803 and 181 1 , Minerva is in decline, a trend that intensifies between 1812 and 1820 when novelists who debut with the Press tend only to publish a single novel. The data also remind us that despite Minerva's flag­ ging numbers of new novels, some of the Press's most prolific novelists continue to publish, both with Minerva and elsewhere. Others, new to Minerva, publish prolifically, such as Selina Davenport, Amelia Beauclerc and Anne Hatton. Attention to these authors' novels will show that they comment on the masculinizing of the market and endorse the authorial model that develops over Minerva's thirty-plus-year run. 25

Minerva's Gothics

Statistical analysis verifies the significance of the Press to female novelists, though as I have suggested, in the early years of its rise, we should pay more attention to titles by still unidentified novelists, many ofwhich are signed 'by a lady'. The data also point to a more flexible definition of the Minerva author than previously assumed, especially during the initial years of Minerva's decline, where prolific novelists appear to react to an increasingly stratified market by moving to other presses. To detect Minerva's authorial model, we must shift our emphasis to Minerva's larger network of novels. While more prolific novelists like best-sellers Eliza Parsons and Regina Maria Roche would allow for a more traditional biblio­ graphic study, I treat all novels under discussion as I suggest their authors probably intended them to be read: as exchanges among nodes in a network. By 'exchangeable' I do not mean what their critics often did - interchangeable. Rather, these novelists would have been well aware that their novels would not reach every circulating library, let alone every reader. Minerva novels contribute to pressing conversations of the day, yet no one single novel trans­ forms the conversation. Rather, they collectively recirculate, engage and modifY commonplaces about women's nature, the social order, and, most importantly, as I next illustrate, Romantic redefinitions of authorship and literature.

1:2 Authorizing 'Borrowed' Material If today Minerva is mostly remembered for the vitriol its novels attracted from critics, it is important to remember that, at the time, Minerva novels were treated much like other literary texts that is, critics actually reviewed them, especially in the 1790s before the market was saturated with novels.36 These critics also helped mark nascent divisions between high and low literature by complaining about novels' predictability and poor quality. Romantic-era c onstructions of authorship and literature are by no means monolithic but the prevailing conception - of the original author who transcends the market - has made Minerva's derivative conventions easy to dismiss or deride. The key to reading conventional novels differently is to recognize that the material 26

Remapping Minerva's Influence

these authors borrowed from each other gave them a means (and perhaps the only available means) to contribute to larger debates. Any cluster of Minerva novels could serve as a starting point for analysis, but those novels that take up authorship as a theme respond directly to changing criteria for evaluating literature, calling our attention to the historical process that eventually writes them out of literary history. Novels by four Minerva authors illustrate that novelists drew on Romantic projections of poetic genius as well as anxieties about profligate print culture to develop their own model of collective authorship. Titles have been selected to illustrate the data analysis above, as they benchmark the beginning, middle and end of a collective authorial model that was engendered (and eventually effaced) by Romantic-era print culture. To illustrate how these novels relate, both to each other and to the dominant discourse about authorship which was itself taking shape, I refer frequently to the trope of prolific print culture and, specifically, to one of its constituent images, the novel reader who turns writer.37This image derives from a slightly older (but still present) discursive presenta­ tion of novels and their readers, the 'quixotic' female reader who, sponge-like, soaks up her reading material uncritically, eventually conflating reality with the world of her novels. The quixotic reader's inability to separate her reading material from real life leads to an inflamed sensibility, overwrought perceptions about life and even 'ruin' . Note the distance this c onstruction of the quixotic reader establishes between the reader and the author, who acts as a moral guide.38 By c ontrast, the reader-turned-writer is hardly an author­ itative figure. Rather, like the quixotic reader, she literalizes the world of her novels in everyday life - but now by 'stamping out' more of them. Some contemporary critics' terms to describe this activity are overtly sexual ('promiscuous', 'fecund') ; others' terms evoke a factory (,mechanical') , but all promote the idea that because they are formulaic, circulating-library novels practically self-reproduce. Both the quixotic reader and its unflattering derivation presume a reader whose imagination is shaped by the novels she reads. However, in the original version, imagination is closely linked to sensibility as defined by mid-century writers like Adam Smith. 27

Minerva's Gothics

Individuals who can feel for others can imagine themselves in others' places39 (the young reader is expected to learn from heroines' experiences40). Canonical Romantic writers, as we know, rewrote imagination as an aesthetic value that originates with the poet's sensibility. 41 Such a poet connects readers with fresh associations and authentic, often politically progressive, feelings - as Wordsworth contends in the 180011802 Preface, the reader will 'be in some degree enlightened, and his affections ameliorated'." By contrast, the reader who 'stamps out' novels is unimaginative and putatively insensible - disconnected from the human emotions that create new art. In fact, Minerva novelists who appropriate the cliched quixotic reader at different points in its revision connect their novels both with each other and with canonical texts that signpost Minerva's effect on the literary marketplace, most notably Northanger Abbey and the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. As we know, when canonical Romantic-era writers describe what they do, either explicitly or through author-figures, they reformulate the criteria for evaluating literature, replacing moralistic standards for appraisal with aesthetic ones.43 For this reason, we should consider the quixotic reader a special form of borrowed material. Minerva novelists' repurposing of this popular convention, especially at key transition points in Minerva's run (Lane's early rise; Minerva's zenith; Minerva's decline) , illuminates the same aesthetic shift that renders their novels derivative, making their authorial model more visible to today's readers. My primary focus in this chapter is two anonymous novels that depict women's efforts to publish circulating-library novels, as they provide a unique opportunity to chart how novelists craft an alternative to the selectivity that comes to define literary production. Publication dates are important. Lane published The Follies of St. James Street (1 789) the year prior to christening his press 'Minerva' and What Has Been (1801) at the Press's height in popularity. These are not the only Minerva novels that include novelists as characters, but other novels pay less explicit attention to authors' efforts to publish, and these two are the only ones, to my knowledge, that fictionalize interviews between female novel­ ists and exemplary publishers.44 While scholars have referenced these unusual episodes, either as examples of how Lane probably 28

Remapping Minerva's Influence

advertised his press or as writers' efforts to flatter him, they are discussed only in isolation.45 If these episodes are read in tandem with more conventional features of each novel, they will be seen to index a shift in how literature is evaluated: Follies borrows the moralistic codes and conventions of , lady' authorship (the 'by a lady' signature having been discussed at length above) and What Has Been the introspection and self-elevation of poetic genius. I argue two points. First, at a formative point in Minerva's history, Follies models the sort of relationship to borrowed material that is present in dozens of Minerva novels. Second, the ethos of poetic genius taken up in novels like What Has Been provides fellow novelists with the terminology to identifY an authorial community that was to some extent already there. I conclude with the point that by Minerva's final decade, the full impact of its collective authorial model is felt among prolific Minerva novelists, some of whom by this time publish primarily with other presses. Three novels by two such authors (Anne Hatton and Sarah Green) indicate that Minerva's authorial model had been eroded; these novelists reappraise, for novelists and critics alike, what was soon to be lost.

I

Miss Caroline Mortimer and the 'Lady' Author: Revising

'Discernment'

By the mid-eighteenth century, 'circulating libraries were widely associated with crass pandering to a vulgar audience.'46 Lane worked against this stigma by marketing his press as elegant, fashionable, reputable, and above all, suitable for 'ladies'. As indicated above, some of Lane's authors were men, but 'lady' is also a class designator, and by this definition, it misrepresents many female Minerva novel­ ists. If'discernment', or the capacity to distinguish works of genius from their more plebeian counterparts, becomes a defining feature of Romantic poetics, it originates in part from snobbery. As Deirdre Lynch explains, once Lane made it 'conceivable that novels might become the property of every person', novelists j oined poets and critics in cultivating a new class of discerning readers.47 Novelists most notably, Austen, but also Minerva authors - reshape heroines of sensibility into characters whose 'inner depth' could supposedly only be appreciated by elite readers: 29

Minerva's Gothics Given the opportunity to certify their powers of taste, mental disci­ pline, and sympathetic identification, Austen's readers are able to a:ffinn their individual distinction. They can deny their participation in what was, thanks to figures such as Lackington [ who pioneered the selling of remainders] and Lane, rapid ly becoming a mass market.4S

Accordingly, scholars no longer read Austen's Northanger Abbey as a defence of women's novels;49 instead, it is clear that even as Austen celebrates the phenomenon of women's authorship in chapter 5 of Northanger Abbey, she elevates a select few women's novels above the rest. To create this experience, I suggest, Austen participates in Romantic-era revisions of the quixotic reader. As we know,Austen's defence of novels continues to take shape through the characters of her own novel. Catherine Morland is a quixotic reader of the older literary tradition, placed in a new context and with a new imperative: to defend novels by a new set of criteria.50 While Austen initially casts Catherine against the sentimental mould, her friendship with Isabella Thorpe transforms her into an avid reader of gothic novels and a soon-to-be gothic heroine. It is often mentioned that Isabella's list of'horrid novels' is composed almost entirely of Minerva publi­ cationsY Certainly it is possible to see Austen's awareness that one set of trends is on the decline while the other is on the rise;52 yet Austen's interest is less, I think, in this shift than in literary fad itself and its effects on a certain class of undiscerning readers, many of whom become writers.With Isabella,Austen provides a quintessentially Romantic revision to the quixotic reader. Isabella creates her own drama, potentially ensnaring other readers. Isabella may succeed in creating an intense sentimental friendship for Catherine, but discern­ ing readers are only momentarily fooled. Catherine's naivete, abetted by Henry's knowledge, allows readers to see the 'truth' about Isabella's nature long before Catherine does and provides a bridge to Austen's defence of novels - a defence that fashions a new kind of exemplary novel. Such novels display 'the greatest powers of the mind'.53 Like Austen, the author of Follies borrows the nascent discourse of selectivity: 'it is to a select few only she writes, and not the profest novel readers who love the marvelous' (pp. vi-vii) .Yet Follies features just the sort of sentimental heroine that Austen gently parodies in Northanger Abbey. Of Emma Watson, readers learn: 30

Remapping Minerva's Influence Nature had been bountifu l in a fine genius, a lively a retentive memory. Her heart was gentle and excellent . . . she was beautifu l, delicate, and interesting . . . Our Heroine excel led on the harpsichord; she likely touched the harp sweetly; and . . . she sang from the heart and felt the full force of all her plaintive airs.54

Emma has reason to be plaintive. Early in the novel, she is separated from her childhood sweetheart, Edwin, and pushed into marrying the duplicitous Lord Watson. Much of the first volume describes Emma's misadventures in marriage. Two-thirds of the way in, the author introduces the character of a young female novelist who narrates to the heroine her experience publishing for William Lane. Readers learn that prior to meeting him, she had already published a novel but was not paid and that (after having learned of one anonymous author's financial success) she had been inspired to write a second.55 Unlike several other gruff publishers, Lane treats the young woman in a ladylike fashion, making it easy for her to present her novel as a product of her leisure time. Lane then promises that her novel, if published, will be anonymous and that she will receive a 'small compliment' for her efforts (1: 17-18). Readers also see that Lane has high standards for his publications: he does not accept the young lady's manuscript until after he has carefully examined it (1: 18). The entire scene reads as an advertisement, but all pretence at narrative is dropped with the novelist's concluding statement: This work is now presented to the shrine of public favour: - but that young and timid adventurers of farne may be encouraged to present the offsprings of their genius, to Lane's Literary Repository, it is but justice to say, the proprietor is both free, generous and encouraging; and, to make use of the phrase, possesses fu lly the mechanism of books. James Wallace, Village of Martindale, Welch [sic] Heiress, Duke of Exeter, and Novels that are universally though replete with fine sentences, elegant language, and moral instructions, might have [ otherwise] been consigned to oblivion for his public spirit. (1: 18-19)

By 1789, when Lane published Follies, he was already a seasoned promoter for his press, using blank pages in novels to advertise for 31

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new manuscripts. As Blakey et al. have noted, Lane could well have written this scene himself- or paid an author to market his press. 56 But regardless of who actually wrote this scene, critics portray the novelist only as she presents herself in this one particular scene: female, timid, in need of money, and - most importantly - anon­ ymous. It is not acknowledged that this novelist has a name: Miss Caroline Mortimer. In highlighting this oversight there is an impor­ tant point to be made. Miss Mortimer's interview with Lane plays only a small role in the larger novel. The character of the 'lady' author was surely never intended to do more than advertise for Lane's press, and yet Follies's author does not let her gO.57 Miss Mortimer accompanies Emma Watson through a series of trials, culminating with Lord Watson's public suicide. She even begins to supersede Emma in a nabob's eye. The critic for the Monthly Review actually presumes that 'the author has introduced her own character into the work, under the name of Miss Mortimer': If novel writing is the only species of literature that she has cultivated, we are induced to hope, either that the nabob whom she menti ons, or some other favourable turn, may rescue the pen which has so pathetically traced the circwnstances of profligacy; from being worn down so as to incur the animadversion due to the swarms of pernicious, or, at best sil ly; volwnes that load the shelf of a circulating library.58

When the Monthly's critic characterizes Miss Mortimer as a real­ life woman who is sadly reduced to authoring circulating-library novels, he meshes an emergent vocabulary for discounting novels (the vocabulary of self-reproduction) with gentler but still patron­ izing cliches about novel readers, namely the quixotic reader who collapses the world of her novels with reality. The cliche of the quixotic female reader prepares the Monthly's critic to see the novelist in her work and Miss Mortimer's concerns (or desires) as this novel's real investment. Romantic revisions of this cliche prepare critics, from Blakey onward, to see only Lane's voice and investments in the advertisement. None of these critics notice that Miss Mortimer's continued presence in the novel impacts its c onven­ tionalized narrative - Lady Watson's story. To assess this impact, Lynch's major criterion for 'discernment' (round characters who 32

Remapping Minerva's Influence

appear designed to elicit the reader's own sense of interiority and, accordingly, superiority over other readers) does not easily apply.59 Miss Mortimer is both relatively 'flat' and unquestionably good, although in one key passage, these qualities create an opportunity for discerning readers.When Miss Mortimer counsels LadyWatson against returning to her husband, Emma rejects this advice, noting in her personal correspondence: 'Miss Mortimer, though infinitely amiable, and having, I am convinced, the tenderest affection for me, has some-how, imbibed so cruel an aversion to my lord, that she cannot think ofhis return as a circumstance to be wished' (2: 35-6). Once they are reunited, the lord is increasingly profligate and his lady increasingly miserable. A year and a half after Watson's suicide, Emma remarries out of a sense of duty to her children. Soon after her marriage, she learns that her childhood sweetheart Edwin has died, presumably of a broken heart. This sensitive infor­ mation is conveyed via Miss Mortimer's letters (2: 1 67-8) , which dominate the last part of the novel. These letters show that an important part of Miss Mortimer's character is her deep admiration for Emma, an admiration paralleling the quixotic reader's conflation of ordinary life with the world of her novels. Miss Mortimer enters into such sympathy with Emma that she even falls in love with Edwin. In lieu of drama we find that Miss Mortimer suppresses her feelings, deeming Emma far worthier ofEdwin's affection than herself (2: 162, 177). Follies concludes with a moralistic and self-effacing note to read­ ers. There is no further reference to Miss Mortimer: I beg leave to remark to the YOlm g, the lovely; and the gay, that Emma is by no means a singular or perfect character. That her fate (though she may now, perhaps, be their envy; from her high rank) has been unfortunate, and may be theirs. That an unhappy passion obscured her youthfu l days, and too great a resignation to the wishes of her friends in marrying an unworthy man, was the source of all her misfortunes. A wel l-turned mind could alone have made [Emma] a shining example: and though the author is not preswnptuous enough to hold her forth in that character, she hopes a few circwnstances, drawn from real life, cannot injure, though they may not improve, the age. (2: 180)

33

Minerva's Gothics

Austen's didactic conclusion to Northanger Abbey playfully flattens the complexities of her narrative, creating one last opportunity for readers to recognize themselves as discerning. In contrast, Follies's moralistic conclusion seems a perfect fit for a conventional narrative, if the novel is judged only by the heroine's story. The author professes that Lady Watson's error early in life propels her to her fate, but Miss Mortimer would disagree: Lady Watson could have left her philandering husband. Readers sympathetic to Emma Watson's plight might well have regarded Caroline Mortimer as the most discerning character in the novel. There is a meta-fic tional element to Miss Mortimer's discernment. If Miss Mortimer writes Emma's story precisely as it unfolds, her perspective invites readers to ruminate on alternative possibilities. It could be said that all this makes too much of Miss Mortimer. Certainly, her character is poorly developed by then nascent stand­ ards for literature. To be sure, Follies contributes to writing these standards but only in the attenuated way with which we are familiar. We can discern a new kind of contribution when we recall that for Romantic-era writers, the quixotic novel reader operates as borrowed material of the most special sort. Romantic revisions of the quixotic reader eventually strip circulating-library novelists of their (always highly qualified) authority by merging feminine naiVete with the mercenary hack. The Minerva novelist is seen to naIvely reproduce the same stale, market-driven fantasies. Miss Mortimer (a young lady who is so taken in by a beautiful heroine's story that she adopts that heroine's interests as her own) is an early Romantic-era revision to the quixotic reader. Unlike Austen's own revision - Isabella Thorpe - Miss Mortimer is unpretentious, faithful and yet also possesses a mind of her own. If Miss Mortimer's ordi­ nariness is not unlike Catherine Morland's, this particular version of ordinariness suggests that borrowed material provides 'every person' with the opportunity to write a novel and that if such novels are like Follies, they are like but also unlike every other. Follies's author could accomplish this feat because of the material she borrowed. Novelists and critics had long portrayed novel readers as quixotic, making the novel's heroine a stand-in for the reader herself and her recycled fantasies. Miss Mortimer's continued pres­ ence in the novel broadens its focus slightly from the heroine to 34

Remapping Minerva's Influence

include the figure of the novelist, inviting readers to imagine themselves as authors. This claim recycles Miss Mortimer's initial and obvious purpose, to advertise for Lane's press. Recall the cut-and-pasted feel to Miss Mortimer's first appear­ ance. It has been suggested that her presence was Lane's idea, but it is unlikely that anyone other than a circulating-library novelist could have repurposed the quixotic reader motif to engender a new model for discernment. Lane surely would not have disapproved of Miss Mortimer's continued role in the novel, but it is unlikely that he commissioned it, and this point can be applied to Minerva's reputation today for derivative, conservative themes. Reviewers demanded that 'lady' novelists adhere to conventionalized morals; that most Minerva novelists did so does not mean that they did not have other investments when writing their novels. Minerva novelists obviously do not break free of the discursive rules that dictate what can or cannot be said about authorship or literature. However, Follies's variation on the quixotic reader marks a subtle shift in the discourse about circulating-library authorship and, in turn, a subtle shift in what can be said and by whom. Follies was published at the threshold of Lane's great success, making it by two measures (formal and material) an important artefact of Minerva's effects on the literary marketplace and thus on discerning authors' efforts, from Austen to Wordsworth, to sepa­ rate their work from the rest. The material effects of Minerva output circulate outwards, adding urgency to the pattern Scott Hess illus­ trates throughout the long eighteenth century; with the decline of court culture, the poet carves out a new reason to write.60 In the 1800s and 1810s, Minerva novelists increasingly borrow poetic material rather than 'ladylike ' conventions, as exemplified by What Has Been (1801), a second anonymous novel to feature a woman's efforts to publish her nove1.61 As we will see, the ethos of'genius' enables and indeed seems to invite a meta-discursive turn. That is, the author of What Has Been defines the heroine by her talents; the heroine, in turn, takes pride and pleasure in her work, which she views as a vocation different from all other types of labour. My larger point is that novels like What Has Been make Minerva's authorial model more visible to today's readers. This is not to say that the self-affirmation of genius is naturally more authentic than 35

Minerva's Gothics

the self-effacement of , lady' authorship. Indeed, 'lady' authorship also invites a meta-discursive turn by affording writers the oppor­ tunity to write about writing, as in Follies. However, where the conventions of 'lady' authorship seem designed to conceal the author's hand, those of genius appear to call attention to it, and in a way that remains legible today. II The Poetical Emily Ormond: A Genius for . . . Publishing

Circulating-Library Novels

The author of What Has Been may or may not have drawn from Follies in crafting her heroine's encounter with her publisher - but there is certainly reason to surmise as much. On several counts the two interactions between novelist and publisher closely match. In each: (1) The author sets off alone and on foot through the London streets in the attempt to sel l the copyright to her novel. (2) She needs money. (3) She has been treated rudely by other publishers. (4) An exemplary publisher treats her kindly and her work with respect, reviewing it carefu lly before purchasing it.

Unlike Caroline Mortimer, Emily Ormond is a heroine. If like Lady Watson in the sense that her beauty is just a part of her appeal, Emily's exemplarity is modelled after a newer fashion than sensi­ bility: the gothic romance. Like Radcliffe 's heroines, Emily possesses poetic genius: 'sensibility beams in her intelligent countenance and genius, heaven-born genius, illumines her eyes.'62 Yet Radcliffe's heroines are not published authors even if they are poets. In a manner more akin to Wordsworth than Radcliffe, the author of What Has Been is preoccupied with her heroine's authorial identity. But whereas Wordsworth presents the poet's exemplary morals and taste as a corrective to the reading public's degenerating taste, VVhat Has Been reorients poetic genius to popular gothic conventions. This poetical heroine connects with and is moved by other women's conventional narratives.63 Money is, from the start, a pressing concern for Emily. The novel opens with the backstory about her father's mismanagement of the 36

Remapping Minerva's Influence

family estate, his untimely death and then the death of her saintly mother. Emily has 'since her earliest years been a successful votary of the Muses' (1: 35), and she is determined to profit by her talents. Emily's unpleasant paternal aunt, Mrs Elton, views Emily's hesi­ tation to employ herself by needlework or some other trade as snobbery (Mrs Elton resents Emily's nobly born mother). Though there is no question that Mrs Elton is self-serving and hypocritical, her critique indicates this author's awareness that the rhetoric of genius derives from the logic of social hierarchy. Later in the novel, Emily acknowledges that her family background is responsible for her earlier attitude about millinery: 'for me, pride has impeded, when I think of industry' (1: 162). Emily never becomes a milliner, but she finds a new way of thinking about authorship.64 In the opening chapters, Emily's authorial aspirations are portrayed with all the flourish of the sublime. The author's tone is not ironic. Only the despicable Mrs Elton parodies the young lady's dream: Emily 'will live in an apartment next to the sky, where she will converse with the celestial inhabitants of Parnassus' (1: 34). Even Emily's dear friend, Dorothea, sees her plan to publish as an utterly 'romantic scheme' (1: 36-7; also 161). Counselling Emily to write only once she finds suitable employment and, then, principally for her own pleasure. Dorothea appears to know nothing of the dozens of new authors who published with Minerva in the 1790s or if she does, she does not associate circulating-library authorship with Emily's talents: My dearest Emily; believe me, I hold your talents in the highest esteem - I conceive them to be both bril liant and solid; but genius, my sweet Emily, without patronage must bloom unseen . . . Not but there are benevolent Godlike minds who delight in bestowing the mead of genius; but who, my Emily, will introduce you to the literary world? (1: 36-7)

Emily is persuaded by Dorothea's argument about authorship. She sets aside her writing - and her hopes for independence - and takes shelter in Teignmouth with family friends and their ward, the handsome and poetical Frederick Mandred, with whom she falls in love. 37

Minerva's Gothics

As we might expect of a poetical heroine in the Radcliffe style, Emily frequently indulges in melancholy walks on sublime cliffs overlooking the ocean. When she contemplates some fishermen at sea, she forgets some of her sorrows because 'a mind like that which she possesses, excites a train of pleasurable though inex­ pressive ideas' (1: 82). Emily's reflections lead her back to herself and to a favourable self-appraisal. She reads her own distress, and her ability to take pleasure in solitude and the train of thoughts that follow, as the bitter-sweet product of her situation in life. She assumes that the fishermen take pleasure in their simple experiences and do not need the sophisticated - but always potentially pain­ ful - train of refle ctions that Emily's privileged station in life allows. When Emily later shares this insight with Frederick, he critiques her for romanticizing the fishermen's long hours and dangerous work. He also argues that these men are no less capable of passion and deep feeling than her. For the moment, the moral is left for readers to discern; but by the novel's end, it is clear that the scene is part of a larger critique of a poetic sensibility too far removed from the sorrows and passions ofeveryday people's lives. Interestingly, Emily's underdeveloped brand of poetic sensibility reads like the quixotic reader's underdeveloped discrimination, a point of view conveyed through Dorothea, who 'deeply regretted the power which fancy had over [Emily's] reason'. Even so, 'while Emily is grateful to Dorothea and recognizes the wisdom of her thoughts, her feelings were dressed in a garb so fascinating, that she c ould not resolve to renounce them' (1: 41-2). Dorothea is usefully compared to Miss Mortimer, as both are irrefutably good, lack dimension and disagree with the heroine on a point crucial to her future. This c omparison is more signif­ icant than it may appear. Novelists frequently contrast heroines to other female characters to make either a moralistic point or to highlight a new kind of female character.65 Minerva novels, often characterized as echoing conservative authors, utilize the same techniques, and if we look to these techniques alone, we gener­ ally find only the rote (hence Follies's apologetic conclusion). As with Follies, however, when VVhat Has Been 's most c onventional moments are assessed in the larger frame of the narrative, they illustrate an author's contribution to Romantic-era projections of 38

Remapping Minerva's Influence

authorship. The most conventional moments in VVhat Has Been are Emily's gothic adventures. These dominate the remainder of the first volume and include Emily's encounter with a madwoman, her flight from a villain bent on seducing her, her self-seclusion in a castle and her discovery of an ancient manuscript. Some of this narrative obscures VVhat Has Been's preoccupation with authorship. Two episodes, however, are central to Emily's decision to return to her novel. Emily's authorial identity is fundamentally altered by two women's broken narratives. Shortly after the fisherman episode, Emily encounters a madwoman who wanders the hills ofTeignmouth: 'The wild disor­ der of the poor maniac, her words, her unconnected story, for a few moments drove from the heart of Emily all selfish sorrows' (1: 141). The lady elicits Emily's admiration ('her pride of soul' and 'nobleness of nature' reveal that she too possesses poetic sensibility (1: 135)), and her story (later narrated in full by the lady's deserted husband) reminds Emily of her own unprotected state and the unlikelihood that Frederick's guardian would ever condone their marriage. Emily decides to return to her aspirations to publish. She travels alone to her old family mansion and reunites with two old and loyal servants. Soon, however, Emily is falsely informed of Frederick's death. Grieving and suicidal, she discovers a mouldering manuscript written by a young woman many years prior. Like the madwoman ofTeignmouth's tale, this narrative is broken; one of the servants, who had witnessed the events that led to the lady's confinement, provides Emily with the connective links. This lady had been separated from her lover because of his low birth; she committed suicide after having learned of his death. The manuscript provides yet another opportunity to showcase Emily's poetic sensi­ bility, but this time her associations pull her outside herself Emily dreams of the young lady, and when she awakes, she feels capable of continuing with her own life, despite her despair (1: 279--82). Soon, Emily is reunited with Frederick. Much of the second volume details the newly married c ouple's life in London. This is not a happy story, as Frederick is unable to hold a steady job and turns to gaming and disreputable compan­ ions. When Emily completes her novel, Frederick imagines that it will immediately be recognized as a work of genius; he brings 39

Minerva's Gothics

it to a well-known publisher by the name ofJenkinson, who sends it back after several weeks with a rude dismissal (2: 152-7). Later, after the situation grows dire (they run out of money; their infant has died; Frederick is falsely imprisoned for murder) , Emily travels alone in London and brings her novel to a second, unnamed publisher. The author takes this opportunity to break into the narrative, giving the strong impression that Emily Ormond's publisher, William Lane, is the author's own. And here let me gratify the ardent desire I feel of describing a man for whom all who kn ow him, must feel the highest veneration . . . H e appeared about forty-five, yet in truth was several years older; but the temperance and regular life which he had passed from youth to manhood, had given him a glow of health and cheerfulness not frequently seen in a man absorbed in the cares of the world. His countenance expressed that benign and tranquil cast, which alone results from an Wlsul lied conscience and benevolent heart. 'Good-will toward man' was legibly printed on his open brow; and the sparkling intel ligence of his fine blue eyes was softened by the hwnid drops of pity which the pensive lowl iness and melancholy appearance of Emily had engendered. (2: 238)

Follies's obsequious portrayal of Lane pales beside this rendering. Although it is impossible to ascertain what motivates this author to paint such a portrait (does Lane pay her extra? does she owe him a favour? could she be in earnest?), whereas Miss Mortimer's interview with Lane does not much affect Follies's c onventional narrative, Emily's interview with her exemplary publisher connects directly with a narrative that from the start is about a poet's tran­ sition to a more prosaic form of authorship than genius. With this point in mind we should observe that much as in Follies, Emily's exemplary publisher does not accept her novel immediately. Instead, he provides Emily with a key phrase, her novel lacks 'connexion', and encourages her to revise once she has calmed herself to a state analogous to 'emotion reflected on in tranquillity': 'My dear Madam, ' said he, 'it gives me more pain that I can well express, to tel l you that, notwithstanding the great merit of this

40

Remapping Minerva's Influence Novel . . . it is, in its present state, unfit for the press - it wants connex­ ion. Shut out the cares of the world, my dear Madam, read it over careful ly; and you will soon discover the truth of my assertion; then return it to me, and I wil l become its purchaser.'(my emphasis, 2: 216)

We see once again that Lane will not publish just anything. However, if Emily's own experiences as a writer are any measure, 'connexion' probably means a narrative that is internally cohesive, telling a story (perhaps in contrast to the lyric, which accounts a fragment or an episode in time66). In VVhat Has Been, the narrative coheres by connecting its most conventionalized moments with the writer's train of associations. Early in the novel, these associations illuminate both Emily's class-based pride, as well as her self-elevation above the fishermen. Later, Emily is moved by the half-narrated stories of women who suffer, and from them, she learns to write a cohesive whole. Readers never learn what Emily's novel is about, but we can conjecture that it is not unlike What Has Been, the first line of which states: 'To bear with fortitude the ills of life, to stem the tide of aflliction, and support misfortune with dignity, is in some degree to disarm the sorrow of its story' (1: 1). What Has Been ends relatively happily with the married couple in their home in the country, with Emily continuing to supplement the family income by publishing regularly with her exemplary publisher. In Wordsworth's 180011802 Preface, the Poet witnesses 'real and substantial action and suffering', 'confounding' and 'identifYing' his feelings with those of his low and rustic subjects. The Poet is like the quixotic reader, though in his case, delusion begins in a state of perfect control: 'he let[s] himself slip into an entire delusion.'67 Later, he composes his verse when in solitude, so as to re-enter the delusion and experience his feelings anew.6S Romantic revisions to the quixotic reader render 'her' as reproducing contrived feelings and stale plots - at most, her work will please for a day. By contrast, the Poet creates lasting pleasure for readers across space and time. What Has Been's author challenges period representations of poetic genius and its double, the reader-turned-writer, when showing that other women's conventional narratives (and not poetic 'delusion') enable this poetical heroine to connect with her readers. Still, in assessing VVhat Has Been, the Critical Review sees only 'what has 41

Minerva's Gothics

been already told': ' Few indeed can distinguish invention from recollection, and the events of the present tale may have appeared the genuine offspring of fancy; while, to veterans in the circulating library, for such we profess ourselves, scarcely a single event is new.'69 Immediately following this assessment, the reviewer catalogues this novel's gothic features as proof that the author does no more than imitate. In contrast, Follies's review bypasses its conventional drama, settling instead on Miss Mortimer. This focus allows the reviewer to identifY himself as a gentleman and to identify in the author a lady in need of protection. What Has Been's review was printed twelve years after Follies's. So paired, these two reviews register a shift in how reviewers use cliches about novel readers to self-identify. What Has Been's reviewer highlights his own ability to discriminate between a c opy and an original. The novelist, in turn, is a hack. III Regency Reappraisals of an Authorial Model that was Soon

to be Lost

If critics reviewed virtually all new novels early in Minerva's run, by the Regency period comprehensive coverage was no longer practical owing to the sheer number of new titles.70 In response to, but also influencing this shift, critics increasingly claim discernment as the gold standard for evaluation by prioritizing their own taste over supposed objectivity.71 As we have seen, by the 1810s Minerva no longer dominates the market. There is, it appears, a direct link between Minerva's decline and the ease with which critics associate ephemerality and imitation with the Leadenhall Street Press. Novelists were less likely to debut with Minerva than in previous decades, perhaps because of the stigma of its 'brand'. However, in this decade, some of the most prolific Minerva novelists continue to publish novels, with both Minerva and otherpresses.This conclud­ ing section will glance at three novels by two such authors: Anne Hatton and Sarah Green. Hatton debuted in 1810 with E. Kirby, published her third novel with Minerva in 1814 and then published ten more, all with Minerva, under the pseudonym 'Ann of Swansea' . Green debuted with Minerva in 1790, and published seven out of a total of sixteen novels with the Press. These novels illuminate a collect­ ive authorial model while also bearing testimony to this model's deterioration in an increasingly stratified literary marketplace. 42

Remapping Minerva's Influence

Hatton's debut novel, Cambrian Pictures (reprinted with Minerva in 1813) , culminates in a heated defence of novels - but not the kind that Austen endorses in 1803 and re-endorses in 1816 72 Instead of the select few, Hatton defends the 'derivative' many. Hatton's defence, buried in the complexities of a crowded narrative, is none­ theless the product of careful planning and foresight. This careful planning becomes more obvious when we consider the strategic placement of three recitals of the same passage from a popular romance titled Fatal Obedience, spaced evenly throughout the novel. A description of the torments and jealousies oflove,73 it first appears in volume 1 as a humorous aside. Hatton's heroine,Adeline, never reads romances; Adeline's friend laughs at its unrealistic portrayal of love, mockingly portraying its author as ' [knowing] nothing of human nature '; she also later compares it to any similarly over­ wrought publication." In the second volume, the quoted passage reappears. Adeline's father has critiqued her romantic views of love, persuading her to marry a young man who is literally dying of love for her (though he is handsome and kind, Adeline loves him only as a brother). Adeline picks up Fatal Obedience to reassure herself that her real life is preferable to the turbulent world of novels (2: 221-4). Note the double standard left unremarked on by the author - only the young man is permitted romantic excess. The novel's drama soon shifts to other characters, leaving the impression that Adeline's marriage concludes her story. Indeed, now a mother, she appears happy. When the passage from Fatal Obedience appears for the third and final time, Adeline has, to her horror, fallen in love with her husband's best friend. She opens the novel to painfully verify that its description of love is true. This heroine now recognizes that novels would have helped her navigate her own drama, which culminates in adultery and her death, far better than the advice of her well-meaning father (3: 363-4). She would never have married her husband if she had trusted in her own judgement, a 'structure of feeling' that she cannot fully articulate until she recalls the description of love from Fatal Obedience, a novel that can be inter­ changed with many others." While Cambrian Pictures concludes with two didactic paragraphs (including such gems as 'a single error can ruin lives of many', and 'ladies do not ever place yourself 43

Minerva's Gothics

in such temptation'; 3: 447),Adeline's narrative is not easily reduced to a moral statement. Instead, in her final iteration of the quoted passage, Hatton severs her novel from both new aesthetic ideals and older moralistic ones. This final iteration is so startling that it forces a reappraisal of the entire novel. What could be mistaken for a rote critique of circulating-library novels in fact makes a new aesthetic statement: writers can bypass stale associations (created by social mores) by collectively recrafting derivative conventions anew. But in an increasingly stratified literary marketplace, this new aesthetic loses much of its revisionary potential. Novelists' conversations are impeded when reviewers no longer find it neces­ sary (let alone possible) to review most circulating-library novels, a point that Green conveys with particular force when having returned to Minerva (now A. K. Newman & Co.) in 1824, with Scotch Novel Reading. The novel begins with a reference to critics' neglect of all novels, excepting those of Walter Scott and his imitators (1: 5-6). The impact of this neglect may be measured by this novel's heroine, a quixotic female reader who reads nothing but Scott. Green also incorporates a male character who places novels by even the 'worst, driest' male authors over those by women (1: 89-90). Green presents herself as a literary critic midway through the novel, but notes that critics who write for Blackwood's and the Edinburgh Review would never 'suffer her' to contribute to their journals. Her rebuttal would be, 'I have observation and extent of reading sufficient to see what is visible to every mind capable ofjudging at all' (2: 1 13-14). A decade prior, in Romance Readers and Writers (published in 1810 by Ho okham) Green made a c oncerted effort to tempt critics to read her latest novel, which she subtitles 'a satirical novel' .76 She delivers on the promised satire. One of her central characters, the self-named 'Margaritta' , an avid reader of gothic novels, is initially a burlesque figure and seems to be only an object of derision; over the c ourse of the novel, and, with great subtlety, Green ensures that Margaritta is ridiculed only by the novel's most hypocritical characters, including the beautiful Lady Isabella Emerson, who (like Austen's Isabella Thorpe) supplies her with the novels that engender her quixotic drama (these are 'those seductive novels, whose chief subject is love' , sans marriage vows77). 44

Remapping Minerva's Influence

Strangely, as she is ridiculed, Margaritta's redeeming features come into focus. The young lady is seduced by her lover, and Green aspires to show this character's humanity by ensuring that readers feel for her as she spends a painful night, first outside her lover's door, and later, alone in a park. Green leaves little to the imagi­ nation in these scenes, forcing readers to see that Margaritta will be abandoned. This young lady does not drown herself in the river, as one character predicts, but instead survives her experience to inspire true sympathy and fellow feeling in her hypocritical young friend, who comes to feel 'all the friendship she had, in the commencement of their acquaintance, only feigned' (p. 217). Green seeks to surprise readers with the feeling that an over­ saturated convention can evoke. Wordsworth and Austen both defended their art in the decade after Minerva rose to dominate the market for novels. Both use critical discourse about formulaic novels to authorize their own writing, but in such a way that until recently made these writers difficult to compare. Wordsworth's 180011802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads has long been treated as a seminal document for British Romanticism. Austen's novels have long been canonized, but in such a way that proves her a 'beneficiary' of critics' increasingly patronizing treatment offemale novelists throughout the Romantic period.7S We now recognize Austen's c ontributions to Romantic­ era redefinitions of authorship and literature, but her blind spot in 1816 remains two centuries later: formulaic novels appear 'already read' and not worth reading. If no one novel or 'node' on the Minerva network could be said to be unique and irreplaceable, those novels that comment on emergent discourse about authorship and literature make Minerva's authorial community easier for today's readers to see. No study can do more than sketch a remapping of Minerva's territory, but the publishing records suggest particular transition points in Minerva's history that demand to be 'read'. Those novels across Minerva's network that comment on these transition points illuminate an authorial network that has been undervalued and thus underestimated. Having provided a sketch of transitional moments in Minerva's history, and how authors interact with changing definitions of authorship and literature, we can turn to the Press's early rise in 45

Minerva's Gothics

the mid- to late 1780s. 'By a lady' novels from this period prove to be an important site in the formation of Minerva's network of novels as a 'non-discerning' form of feminist authorship, something that Mary Wollstonecraft misses when writing her feminist brand of Romantic discernment.

46

Section I

Feminist Discernment and Minerva's Production of Romantic Fantasy

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Section Overview

Lane may well have owed his initial success in the market to his cultivation of a 'ladylike' model of authorship. Most of the 'by a lady' novels that he published in the mid- to late 1780s are variations on the sentimental novel, which, as Edward Jacobs has illustrated, was already gendered feminine and reproductive.1 This section discusses female-identified novels published during Minerva's early rise and zenith and is organized around the argument that Mary Wollstonecraft's literary production in this same period marks her own evolving relationship to the popular novel market. In reviewing novels for the Analytical Review in the late 1780s, Wollstonecraft portrays most sentimental novels as imitative, and genders this writing 'feminine': most 'lady novelists' are like 'timid sheep' who 'do not dream of deviating either to the right or the left' of senti­ mental conventions, such as 'sad tales of woe', heroines' 'dazzling beauty' and 'exquisite double-refined sensibility' .' Wollstonecraft helps to shift critical representations of female novel readers (from sponge to stamp), but her critique of women's seemingly mindless adoption of sentimental conventions anticipates her argument in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792): women's imaginations and desires must be reconstituted before women can attain their full human potential. Wollstonecraft's 'feminist discernment' - that is, her efforts to elevate herself above market concerns and most female authors - disables her from engaging with Minerva novels as a network. A reading of a representative selection from this network shows what Wollstonecraft misses. These novelists treat the romantic fantasy of undying love as an opportunity to revise

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy

commonplaces about women's nature and virtue. Some even seize the opportunity to question critical representations of feminine, reproductive writing itself. As a reviewer of novels in the late 1780s, Wollstonecraft herself attended to the way in which popular literary conventions seem to furnish authors' imaginations. It was in these reviews that she begins to flesh out the operating principle in Rights: linking women's minds, bodies and fates to renowned philosophical and educational texts that shape the contours (for both men and women) of what seems possible and desirable. When Wollstonecraft concludes that philos­ ophers and moralists, mostly male, have upheld and refined a false philosophy and a corrupt system of manners that originates with Rousseau's Sophie, the meek and compliant heroine ofEmile (1762), she concedes that this argument would be a hard sell for women and men alike. In 1790s Britain, most men are educated to love women only when they are young and 'beautiful' in the Burkean sense - that is to say, weak and ineffectual. Most women accordingly desire to be the 'beautiful flaws' of Rights, forever in love or, at the least, forever able to inspire it.3 Wollstonecraft asks, 'is it surprising that women everywhere appear a defect in nature?'4 In Rights Wollstonecraft represents herselfas a 'herculean' author ­ through uncommon efforts, she has broken from commonplace habits of mind and has thus transcended a 'feminine' model of subjectivity.5 Wollstonecraft's self-representation is analogous to Wordsworth's in his 180011802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Both writers suggest that they have fashioned their own habits of mind, freeing themselves from what each perceives to be the common stock ofthe popular imagination. These seminal Romantic-era texts reflect the Enlightenment belief that truth can be discovered through reason, but Wollstonecraft's and Wordsworth's shared insist­ ence that they are free from popular taste anticipates the Romantic emphasis on the imagination.6 Their work exemplifies the influence ofpopular print culture on canonical Romantic poetics and politics but without being fully representative of Romantic exchange, which is more than just the Romantic author's reaction to a 'prolific' print market. This exchange, when evident in first- or second-generation Romantics' work, suggests interaction with popular conventions themselves. This more dynamic form of interaction is evident in 50

Section Overview

Wollstonecraft's novel, The Wrongs ofWoman or Maria (1798). In the preface,Wollstonecraft contrasts her heroine to the heroines of the popular press, whom she, not coincidentally, dubs 'highly-finished Minervas'. Wollstonecraft is clear that despite Maria's revolutionary habits of mind, she still is subject to the commonplace fantasy that structures most women's novels: the fantasy of everlasting romantic love. In Wrongs, Wollstonecraft writes of popular novelists, but to 'revolutionary feminist' writers like herself,7 so as to show that in 1790s Britain, even the strongest-minded women are subject to unbidden, because conventional, emotions and desires. By contrast, forWordsworth, unbidden emotions reflect the Poet's self-fashioned habits of mind, and are indeed proof of his freedom from the gross and sensationalized feelings engendered by popular print culture. This reading is similar in some respects to Mary Poovey's influ­ ential argument that Wrongs reflects Wollstonecraft's own susceptibility to sentimental conventions.Whereas Poovey speculates that sentimental conventions derail Wollstonecraft's 'main object', a systematic exposure of the wrongs done to women,s I find that Wollstonecraft makes clear (both in her preface and through author­ itative narrative asides) that she retains tight control over her narrative. Because the discerning feminist novelist, as exemplified by Wollstonecraft, retains revolutionary habits of mind, she can envisage new possibilities for male and female subjects. In other words,Wollstonecraft feels herself capable of writing new visions something that revolutionary feminist novelists (e.g. Helen Maria Williams, Eliza Fenwick, Mary Hays) are already busy doing. Rather than permit herself this luxury, Wollstonecraft curtails her imagi­ nation so as to show her compatriots that until men and women meet as equals, they are fooling themselves if they represent them­ selves as free subjects. In Wrongs, Wollstonecraft posits that revolutionary habits of mind do not guarantee revolutionary feelings for women or men - though women are far more hamstrung by their feelings than men, seeing that men's desires for 'feminine' women do not interfere with their capacity to self-actualize. Self­ fashioned habits of mind will not protect the revolutionary feminist author from desires and emotions that reflect a commonplace fantasy. Over her career as a professional writer,Wollstonecraft maintains that women are subject to man-made desires and fantasies. As she 51

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy

indicates in Wrongs, prolific print culture - and in particular, women's reproductive novels - turn this problem into a pressing issue. What makes 'reproductive' writing 'feminine' in Wollstonecraft's view is the way that female novelists buy into shared and highly seductive fantasies that perpetuate women's subjugation. Wollstonecraft's failed affair with Gilbert Imlay is surely one reason for her pessimistic view of romantic love in Wrongs, as is often noted,9 though her personal experiences would also have made her more aware of her own limits as a revolutionary subject - and, accordingly, as a novelist and social critic, increasingly attentive to the ways that she too is subject to a shared cultural imaginary, and its vehicle, popular conventions. Whereas our intimate knowledge ofWollstonecraft's biography makes her work especially compelling, Minerva novels often read as 'generic' - often literally, by any so-called 'lady'. However, these novels are most interesting when read as part of a larger network, a supposition to which I hope the following discussion does justice.

52

2

Julies and St Preuxes: Networking 'L ady ' Authors, 1 785-1 789

The sentimental fantasy of undying love, as taken up by 1780s novelists - from Wollstonecraft to Lane's 'by a lady' authors - consist­ ently includes three conventions: a heroine of sensibility; a young man who is capable of assessing the heroine's true worth; 3Illbiti ous parents, or some other obstacle, render the lovers asunder.

Other common c onventions include: the lovers exchange vows of everlasting love; but one of the lovers eventually marries someone else, albeit with deep hesitation and loss; the lovers later achnit their undying love: on one of the lover's deathbeds, or, on the deathbed of the lover's unfortunate spouse, in which case s/he usual ly encourages their partner to marry their true lover; the lovers die. •

Sentimental novels - usually told in the first person through the epistolary 'I' - presume a close interrelationship between mind and body. Heroes and heroines are too good for this world; the conflict they experience is internalized and then manifested physically, usually as a fever or consumption.1 As we will see, however, some 1780s novelists adapt convention to allow the lovers to survive.

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy

There are other variations in the formula, but the one constant is a heightened, even euphoric, definition oflove. In contrast to esteem or respect, love is defined as a communion of souls and as something that can only be experienced once, hence the sentimental heroine's credo: no second attachments (a convention that Austen playfully recalls in Sense and Sensibility when marrying Marianne off to Colonel Brandon). In the sentimental novel, the romantic ideal reads as a vision or a projection of love as it ought to be, a point that bears directly on Wollstonecraft's first novel, Mary (1788). Here, an ideal lover precedes the actual one, and the lover is the fantasy incarnate. As Henry tells Mary, not long before he dies, 'thou art the being my fancy has delighted to form; but which I imagined existed only there! '2 In an author's advertisement, Wollstonecraft reaches beyond the fantasy, illuminating both the pleasure ofimag­ ining an ideal as well as the uniqueness ofits inventor:'These chosen few, wish to speak for themselves, and not to be an echo - even of the sweetest sounds - or the reflector of the most sublime beams. The paradise they ramble in, must be of their own creating.' This concept of discernment, the now classic contrast between imagi­ nation and imitation, becomes central to canonical Romantic poetics, and (as Deirdre Lynch substantiates) is co-authored by a wide range of Romantic-era writers, from poets and critics to novelists.3 But a second kind of discernment is also at play, as senti­ mental conventions can be mobilized for feminist purposes4: The mind of a woman, who has thinking powers is displayed. The female organs have been thought too weak for this arduous employ­ ment; and experience seems tojustify the assertion. Without arguing physical ly about possibilities - in a fiction, such a being may be al lowed to exist. ('Advertisement' to Mary)

When Wollstonecraft contrasts those novels that 'echo' other voices to those few like her own that display original thought, she does not dismiss convention out of hand. Indeed, she treats senti­ mental convention as an opportunity to replace the feminine ideal, as written by Rousseau and others, by a feminist ideal. Vision, Wollstonecraft implies, is reserved for an author with the strength of mind to transcend a culturally produced fantasy. In what follows, 54

'Lady' Authors, 1 785-1 789

I show that Minerva novelists also remodel the sentimental vision of everlasting romantic love for feminist or what we might call visionary purposes, but in such a way as to lay the groundwork for an 'undiscerning' model of Romantic-era authorship. Rather than elevate their work above that of most other authors, these novelists treat reproductive writing as part of a larger network in which their own c ontribution gains nuance and meaning. To support this argu­ ment, I read Lane 's novels horizontally. If a vertical argument would show that one point of the argument is made possible by a particular novel, a horizontal argument can begin with any number of nodes on the network. Each novel or 'node ' , as a stand-in for the genre, is also always a variation on the genre and can be analysed as a site of interaction between the author and the genre's social motives. As Anis Bawarshi explains, invention is 'the site in which writers act within and are acted upon by the social and rhetorical conditions that we call genres - the sites in which writers acquire, negotiate, and articulate the desires to write'. 5 A source text for Lane's 'by a lady' publications is Rousseau's epistolary novel, Julie, au la Nouvelle Heloise (1761). Singular and unique, St Preux's love for his pupil, Julie, is the stuff of fantasy. After Julie gives way to their passion, St Preux still sees her as the incarnation ofvirtue, and his devotion continues after she becomes Monsieur de Wolmar's wife. Richardson's Clarissa (1748) is a second source text. Novelists adopt Clarissa's moral perfection as well as Richardson's dramatic scenery, e.g. women persecuted by plotting noblemen, abductions, attempted rape. Richardson's novel, however fantasizes exemplary womanhood, not exemplary love, and Lovelace eventually rapes Clarissa. Most of the novels I discuss recycle Rousseau's fantasy by propagating the ideal of undying reciprocal love, albeit adapting the fantasy to contemporary insistence that heroines be chaste. Still,Wollstonecraft contends in Rights that half her sex, 'in its present infantine state' , would 'pine for a Lovelace'.6 Lane's 'by a lady' novels suggest otherwise. In several of them, even the impassioned St Preux is up for revision. Novelists treat Julies and St Preuxes as common property for reconstructing feminine and masculine ideals and for re-envisioning love. It will be important to keep in mind that Lane was only able to catch the trailing end of a trend, as the sentimental novel's heyday 55

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy

was over by the 1770s. By continuing to sponsor this subgenre, Lane risked being overtaken by the times. As Janet Todd states, 'when sentimental works are accepted and in fashion, they primarily make the reader or watcher cry; when outmoded, they appear ridiculous.'7 Sensibility remains, however, an influential factor in first-generation Romantic politics and poetics. As described earlier, while the sentimental novel proper moves to the rearguard, vanguard writers regenerate sensibility by elevating themselves and their discerning readers above the majority in an increasingly crowded literary market (e.g. Wollstonecrail's distinction between true and false sensibility in Mary and, later, Wrongs; Wordsworth's portrait of the Poet's innate sensibility in the 1802 'Preface';Austen's contrast between the unabashedly genuine Catherine Morland and the affected Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey). In repurposing the sentimental novel for socia-political critique in the 1790s, Wollstonecraft and her c ompatriots provide a strong sense of an authorial 'I', as Nicola Watson describes.8 In contrast, even when taking up the epistolary 'I', Lane's 'by a lady' sentimental novels read as generic. Nonetheless, as we will see, sentimental conventions provide novelists with the language and with the opportunity to revise commonplaces that delimit their lives, from the sexual double standard to critical representations offeminine, reproductive writing itself In the novels below, sentimental conventions appear in all their overwrought glory - overwrought to today's readers, that is, just as they were apparently to vanguard Romantic-era writers. Accordingly, we might slightly modifY Todd's description: for many 1780s readers and writers, sentimental novels are still in fashion. True to type, unless stated otherwise, these novels are published by Lane, unidentified, epistolary, and signed 'by a lady'.

2:1 Forming a Network The opening letter of The Sentimental Deceiver: or, History of Miss Hammond (1784), written by the hero, Henry, reproduces Rousseau's fantasy - a rural setting with ill-fated young lovers who have given way to their passion - albeit with an important variation. Henry could marry Maria, yet he no longer wants to. An elegant, conniving 56

'Lady' Authors, 1 785-1 789

woman charms Henry from the simple pleasures of rustic love and tempts him into matrimony. In one sense, the point of the novel is simple - sentimentality can be feigned and readers must learn to discern true sensibility from affectation. While Henry is busy chasing after his 'sentimental deceiver', Maria's beauty and virtue, along with that ineffable something that signifies her soul, capture the heart of a second young man, Sir Edmund. Once Henry disc overs that his wife is a dissipated, extravagant woman, he reflects on his earlier passion for Maria, recognizing that she is everything he had believed his wife to be. But it is too late, and both Henry and Maria die for their love, Henry from a duel with Edmund, Maria from the typical fever and consumption. This ending is conventional; yet it does not quite fit with the rest of the novel. Edmund is more of a St Preux than is Henry. After all, Henry mistakes the tinsel for the gold, but Edmund immediately recognizes Maria's worth. Edmund sees in Maria all the beauty of the ideal even knowing that she has 'fallen' from virtue, a point that the author underscores. Maria does not mince words when telling Edmund of her previous attachment - her 'heart is engaged' and her 'person is violated'. 9 While Maria blames herself for her own lack of chastity, telling Henry, 'Your want of affection, was the natural consequence of my want of resolution' (p. 204), she does not berate herself for her behaviour: 'I have been weak, but not criminal; love sanctifies the action' (p. 13). Yet Edmund persists in loving Maria, even as she persists in upholding the heroine's credo to love only once. In The Sentimental Deceiver, the hero is deceived as much by his own prejudice as he is by any ' sentimental' charmer. Henry falls out of love with Maria once she falters from the feminine ideal. As Henry's double, Edmund, possesses a more capacious imagination, Henry's loss of interest in Maria reads as a failure of imagination - Henry's imagination, not the author's. Readers see that Henry's errors result from his prejudiced ideas about female worth, and that the catastrophe that follows could have been averted had he been more like Edmund. Of course, the catastrophe is not averted and arguably could not be, since Maria falls in love with Henry prior to meeting Edmund. Much like Maria herself, readers are held captive to the heroine's credo. We could even go so far as to say that this second St Preux appears 57

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy

as a tantalizing feminist vision, not yet compatible with ' conven­ tion', whether social or literary. Feminist politics are forward-looking, as writers make an effort to rethink the possible. The author of The Sentimental Deceiver introduces a feminist vision but keeps it at arm's length, a yet-to-be-realized fantasy. In Matilda: or the Efforts of Virtue ( 1785) , the author allows this vision to materialize. The author embeds one heroine's story within a second's, turning the second heroine into a novel reader. These heroines are a mother and a daughter, both named Matilda. The dying mother writes a letter to her daughter (then still a young child) in an effort to instruct her once she is grown. The elder Matilda had had an idealized vision oflove prior to marriage, but the man she marries, worthy as he is, did not meet this ideal: 'The idea of a lover more completely to my taste had formed itself in my mind . . . there was wanting in his love to me something of fervor and refined delicacy, which my heart demanded, which it wished to find, and which it panted to return.'lOThe elder Matilda's friends label her vision 'chimerical' and encourage her to marry her husband ( 1 : 64-5) . When Matilda meets her husband's best friend, Lucius, she finds her fantasy incarnate. Matilda deceives herself into believing that her love for Lucius is sisterly, but Lucius fully awakens her consciousness when he professes his undying love on (naturally) his own deathbed: 'Think, my amiable, my exalted, Matilda, when you read this, that death has set me free from the observance of all human forms. All earthly ties are now dissolved; my soul speaks to yours . . . Long have I loved you:- we were made, I think, for each other' (1: 95). In an authorial twist of hand, Lucius recovers. Regretting his precipitate declaration, he tries to keep his distance from Matilda. This situation could hardly end happily, and all three (husband, wife, and beloved) die, with Matilda never straying from virtue. Matilda concludes her letter by urging her daughter not to marry too hastily, and to let 'sentiments, taste, guide the choice' (1: 130). Moved, the younger Matilda takes her mother's instructions to heart, wondering where she will find a 'Lucius' of her own (1: 135-6). When Matilda meets Somerville, the man of her dreams, complications in the plot keep them apart for nearly a volume. It is the heroine who finally breaks the silence: 'I did not . . . dissemble my partiality for him' (1: 132). Matilda 58

'Lady' Authors, 1 785-1 789

recognizes her feelings for what they are and dares to break feminine conventions for modesty. If she had not, she might have missed her opportunity for a feminist version of everlasting love. Somerville speaks of Matilda's behaviour in this same episode with admiration, and in a way that anticipates Wollstonecraf\'s argument that modesty is a human virtueY How generous, how delicate was her behaviour! . . . she proceeded to unravel the mysteries which veiled our mutual happiness: but when the discovery was fully made, and her radiant blue eyes blessed me with the full assurance of her yielding heart, were ever modesty and love so sweetly expressed before! (2: 144)

Later, once the lovers are married, Somerville writes of his happiness, and represents arguments for woman's 'nature' - and in particular, the Burkean association of women with beauty, and beauty with weakness - as in conflict with the romantic fantasy: How many men, of the best understandings and the truest integrity of heart, have I met with, who have thought the sex fonned only for domestic enjoyments and those little elegancies that embellish life? If a woman is possessed of a strong understanding, or is ambitious of knowledge, and has a taste for literature, such a man fancies she inter­ feres with his province, and is either masculine or conceited: he thinks he can find an agreeable companion in a wife whose innocent vivac­ ity is fonned to please him, and who aspires to no higher honour than being pennitted to unbend his mind from graver pursuits. All she can claim from him is fidelity, and an indulgence to the little pleasures and innocent inclinations of her sex; but he expects to find his highest gratification in the society of a few chosen friends of his own sex, to whom he communicates his knowledge and his opinions, and joins with them in mental pleasures. What a false system is this! (3: 106-7)

Somerville concludes this rather extraordinary letter by representing his marriage as one that 'dignifies the pleasures of sense, and makes those of reason interesting to the heart!' (3: 107). Matilda resembles Mary: both authors project a feminist version of everlasting romantic love, and both authors refer to other sentimental 59

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy

novels. On the other hand, whereas Wollstonecraft uses an author's preface to make a bold assertion about the singularity of her own novel, the author of Matilda makes a point of connecting the hero­ ine's narrative to other sentimental novels. The Romantic era's best-known discerning authors, from Austen to Wollstonecraft to Wordsworth, almost cannot help but reveal their familiarity with popular conventions when they distinguish their work from that of the greater majority. (Austen, of course, embraces this necessity, defining her innovations against commonplace use of conventions; by contrast, Wordsworth works to deny any c onnection between his poetry and popular conventions, most notably the gothic.12) Indeed, discernment itself can be read as a variation on so-called reproductive writing: the author recycles popular conventions but to claim a unique purpose, as does Wollstonecraft in her advertise­ ment to Mary. By contrast, by illustrating that Matilda relives and revises her mother's story, the author of Matilda treats reproductive writing as a forum for rethinking the possible without claiming originality or distinction. We see a similar ethos at work in The Liberal American (1785). Over the course of the novel, Louisa and Sophia correspond across the Atlantic, confiding troubles and offering advice. Sophia's history is as follows: she and Sir Edward Hambden have long silently loved each other. Both are silent for conventional reasons (Edward cannot afford to marry Sophia, and Sophia's modesty will not permit her to profess her love first). When Sophia and her aunt depart for a new life in New York, both lovers try to forget each other. Edward pines away in England, and Sophia, once in New York, resists the advances of a worthy young man, Mr Elliot. In her letters to Louisa, Sophia repeatedly turns to the stock phrases of sentimental love: I acknowledge his merit, but feel myself llllable to return his affection; he is not the man of my heart, and never will I bestow my hand without it.13

Had I, my Louisa, a heart to bestow, what happiness might I expe­ rience with this amiable man! But it is impossible; 'there is no reasoning into love.' (1: 174)

60

'Lady' Authors, 1 785-1 789

True I feel for him the most lively esteem and the most heartfelt gratitude; but then, to marry him with the impression of another on my heart, how is that to be reconciled? (2: 111)

Believing that Sophia harbours a hopeless passion, Louisa counsels her to marry Elliot, though acknowledging: 'perhaps it would not be so exquisite as with your first choice' (2: 60). Sophia is unconvinced until she meets Henrietta Villars, a pregnant and deserted wife who preaches a different commonplace, that love is fleeting and even delusory: Believe me, a romantic attachment is not always productive offelicity: behold in me an example; I loved, fondly, passionately, loved; but soon the airy phantom ofbliss took its flight! And what am I now?­ ah! Nothing but sorrow, deep and inexpressible anguish, is now my portion on this side of the grave! And such is too frequently the case with those connexions of choice . . . Sweet friend, let me advise you to guard well your heart; you are possessed of that amiable, but dangerous, quality,- sensibility; ah! Beware of its delusions. (2: 11 5-17)

After hearing Henrietta's story, Sophia accepts Elliot. The night before the marriage, she hurls her portrait of Edward into the fire, writing to Louisa: 'ifit is not love 1 feel for Mr Elliot, it is a sensation which very much resembles it;- it is an esteem founded on grati­ tude, and a thorough conviction of his worth' (2: 159). Later, Sophia and Elliot travel to England where they cross paths with Edward. Elliot senses the truth: ' I saw two virtuous hearts struggling with an unallowed passion' (2: 257). Elliot blames himself for marrying a woman who was unable to offer him her whole heart. He soon dies ofthe conventional consumption, but not before bequeathing his wife to Edward (Elliot, we see, is the titular 'liberal American'). Sophia's 'St Preux' validates sentimental convention - cool esteem is no match for love, which is undying. Louisa's story is similarly cast: a St Preux-figure; a pregnant, deserted woman; and, of course, the heroine herself Louisa and the handsome Mr Walton had just set their wedding date when Walton is summoned to Scotland by 61

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy

his ailing father. On his return, a beautiful young woman confronts Louisa with the news that she and Walton were lovers when he was in Scotland - apparently he had acted the St Preux, 'ardently' prom­ ising to marry her (2: 135). Walton acknowledges the truth of her story, albeit with one notable revision: Miss Wallace had been the pursuer.Walton deems his behaviour 'youthful folly', to which Louisa responds spiritedly that whatever he chooses to call it, she will no longer marry him (2: 142).When Sophia sees the situation differently, urging Louisa not to be so quick to side with Miss Wallace (especially since she has taken another new lover) , Louisa asks: But why should I, my Sophia? If Miss Wallace is infamous, is he not the cause? But for him would she not still have lived in innocence? Does her crime cancel his? Surely not.\Vhy then should I be reconciled to him? Believe me, my friend, my heart is greatly in his interest, but my principles tell me I must not listen to its dictates. (2: 205)

These competing stories about MissWallace's situation draw readers into a debate about how to feel about her - not to mention Walton. Louisa sympathizes with Miss Wallace until learning she has taken two new lovers, at which point she reconciles with Walton. That Miss Wallace, initially portrayed as a victim, is now represented as abandoned and shameless, replaces Louisa's feminist critique with contemporary constructions of female worth. But readers will probably recall that Walton had portrayed his affair with Miss Wallace as 'youthful folly' - and that he had found it all too easy to forget his betrothed just a month prior to their wedding. Readers may also remember that Henrietta Villars was once herself the beloved object of a St Preux, whose supposedly undying love led to her 'ruin'. Miss Wallace's story, in other words , looks different when read as part of an interconnected series of stories. In The Liberal American, the partial or revisionary work of one heroine's story is furthered by a second. III Effects of a Rash Vow (1789) also challenges the sexual double standard, in this case by permitting the romantic fantasy to a woman past her first bloom (Austen similarly bends convention nearly thirty years later, in Persuasion, 1817). Charles Seymour, a young and handsome gentleman of twenty, is passionately in love with the 62

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twenty-seven-year-old Laura Herbert, and has been since he was ten years old. Laura (the same age as Austen's Anne Elliot), is married to Mr Herbert, a man thirty years her senior. She had married Herbert hoping that he would be devoted to her, even with what she considers to be her plain face. She is shown to be incorrect on both counts. Laura is perfectly lovely, and Herbert is unfaithful. The great surprise of the novel is that the 'rash vow' that gives the novel its title is not Laura's wedding vow. Rather, it is a vow that Laura makes once already married, on her discovery that she passionately loves Seymour. Horrified, she vows that if she outlives Herbert, she will never marry her beloved. As readers have access to Laura's thoughts only through her letters, Laura's passion for Seymour and her vow remain a secret until after Herbert's death, when she confides in her friend, Lady Conway. Laura regrets her precipitate vow, but 'like a nun's [her vow] is sacred to Heaven'. 14 When Lady Conway informs Seymour of Laura's vow, he falls into a fever. The two mingle tears at Seymour's deathbed, and Laura does not long outlive her lover. Seymour's last wish was for a monument to Laura, a temple inscribed with her name and the note, 'In bliss my soul waits for thee' (2: 215). Seymour's love is as fervent and long-lasting as St Preux's, but he is not so fastidious. Even while pining for Laura, he had indulged his sensual appetites in affairs with other women. As Lady Conway notes, 'Had he loved her with the delicacy and tenderness I supposed, he would not act as he does . . . self-gratification and love of the sex sway our modern men' (p. 2: 138). That Seymour is so easily satisfied by sex without love suggests that he might not be entirely unlike Mr Herbert once he is married. While Rash Vow has no gender identifier, Lane refers to the author as a 'she' in a 1788 advertisement in The Star and Daily Evening Advertiser. 'the author . . . who favoured the publisher with her correspondence some time since, under the signature of MATILDA, is respectfully informed, that the Novel is nearly finished.''' Regardless of who 'Matilda' really is (possibly a play on the 'Matilda' of the 1785 novel above) this advertisement is further evidence that Lane c ourted female authors and encouraged a ' lady­ like' model of authorship - supposedly, 'Matilda' is so eager to keep her identity anonymous that she even conceals her name from Lane. 63

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In 1789 ,Wollstonecraft found the conclusion ofRash Vow 'unnatural' and 'ridiculously dreadful', so much so 'that we smiled at the numbers death swept away'.!6 True, the ending is both contrived and overwrought, but Wollstonecraft's discernment makes it difficult for her to see that rearguard conventions can be access points to the conventional language that delimits women's lives. The author of Rash Vow uses rearguard conventions to critique the way that the sentimental hero is shaped by society. In her opening remarks to Rights, Wollstonecraft suggests that she is able to see what most other women cannot: the cultural workings of the imaginative framework that forms the feminine ideal, and in turn, the grip of this ideal on real women's interests and happiness. As a woman who has 'dared to think and act for [her]self' Wollstonecraft has already accomplished what she terms 'a herculean task'.17 But the above novels suggest that sentimental conventions provide 'lady' authors with their own opportunity to sift through arguments and weigh competing points of view. Elizabeth Bonhote's Olivia; or, Deserted Bride (1787) is a particularly compelling example.!S Bonhote advances and then retracts the contention that women's particular experiences reflect larger patterns of injustice, drawing readers into a dialectical argument. Although Olivia is not epistolary, letters appear at key points in the narrative. Early on, a St Preux-figure, Davenport, breaks Olivia's heart (he acquiesces in his father's insistence that he marry an heiress). Later, Olivia marries Vane. Readers are guided to endorse Olivia's decision: She looked at Vane, and in him beheld the person who had raised her from obscurity; who, by uniting his fate with hers, in opposition to his interest, and the usual custom of his sordid sex, had made her the envy of the world. Such reflections hushed every doubt of the lover being lost in the husband.19

When Davenport learns of Olivia's marriage, he throws himself at her feet, swearing his love and devotion. Vane finds Davenport in this awkward position and, presuming Olivia's infidelity, deserts her, at which point two different points of view are advanced in letters. The first, from Olivia's friend and correspondent, Eliza, advises her 64

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to 'assume the pride of injured innocence, and the rights ofliberty' (2: 2). The second, from Olivia's guardian, recommends that she win Vane back through devotion and obedience. Olivia listens to her guardian, only to be rewarded by her husband's brutal treatment. He abandons her for two years and then has her kidnapped. To justifY his behaviour he explains: 'you must yield to the will of him who has a right to dispose of you as he pleases' (2: 90). Eliza's suggestion that Olivia claim her freedom emerges from her own experience of being jilted, which had led her to conclude that laws and customs make women subservient to men: ' I am at this time . . . so alarmed at the unlimited power with which the ceremony that authorizes the rights of hymen invests the lordly sex, that I verily believe I will never find sufficient courage to go into a church to return a slave ' (2: 2). Eliza eventually does marry, however, and in her happiness retracts her earlier view, saying: "Tis cruel to suspect the whole of Nature for the fault of an indi­ vidual' (2: 48). Vane also eventually regrets his mistreatment of Olivia, and the marriage is said to be happy. In what appears to be poetic justice, Bonhote kills Vane off near the end of the novel. Davenport (whose wife has also died) urges Olivia to marry him, but she resists. Vane then appears to her in a dream and urges the same. The two marry and Davenport is said to remain 'a fond lover even after [Olivia's] beauty is gone' (p. 190). Olivia's second marriage, ifthe stuff of fantasy, indicts behaviour that no one, barring Eliza, had dared to overtly challenge. Lane's 'lady' authors are not as systematic as Wollstonecraft - or when they are, as in Bonhote's novel, they retract their argument. Wollstonecraft shows that systematic arguments dismantle common­ places - but novelists who publish with Lane often treat commonplaces themselves as opportunity to contest convention, as is the case in Edward and Sophia (1787). This 'lady' author takes the fact that a woman's reputation is so closely wound up with appearances to allow an apparently 'fallen' heroine to earn back her virtue and be rewarded with everlasting love. Sophia is chaste, but appearances suggest otherwise, and for some time she lives the life of a 'fallen' woman. Edward and Sophia is not an epistolary novel but, as in Olivia, letters figure in the plot, in this case as a c ontriv­ ance, by a rival, to ruin Sophia's reputation. The novel begins with 65

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the usual young lovers and the rustic setting. When Edward leaves for India in hopes of earning his fortune, Sophia is kidnapped by a licentious lord. When they stop at an inn, Sophia calls for help. Two ladies, a Mrs Herman and her daughter, rescue her and invite her into their home. Mrs Herman presumes Sophia's guilt, especially after receiving an anonymous letter that impugns the young lady, but rather than castigate Sophia, she supports her, explaining that 'the hill of virtue is indeed rugged and steep - but you may yet regain it.'20 while Mrs Herman believes that a woman's life does not begin and end with her chastity, she recognizes the impact that social convention has on women's lives and encourages Sophia to take on a false name so that she can find work. Sophia lives for five years as another young woman's companion. In the meantime, Edward returns home, only to hear that Sophia has run off with a lord. He believes the rumours, and although his benefactor chides him for jumping to c onclusions, neither man can imagine more than one possible route for a 'fallen' woman. As Edward's benefactor states, 'all that is left us to do, is, if possible, find out the poor deluded girl, and, by settling on her a comfortable annuity, put it in her power to forsake the vicious path she has unhappily chosen' (2: 1 1 5). Once the truth is discovered, Edward and Sophia marry. The novel concludes with the thought that although Sophia did not fall, she easily might have: Who knows to what extremities her hard fate might have exposed her? How soon she might have fallen again into the lawless snares of a titled villain, or any other unprincipled libertine; had not [Mrs Herman's] protection offered her a safe asylwn. (2: 270)

The important point here is that Sophia's exemplarity is fortuitous, a c ombination of character and chance. Edward could not have imagined marrying Sophia if she had actually ' fallen ' , but the author of Edward and Sophia can. Sophia would still deserve her happy ending if she had fallen and struggled back up that 'hill of virtue'. Vision, it seems, is not reserved for 'herculean' authors. Novels like Edward and Sophia demonstrate that 'lady' novelists treat popular conventions themselves as an opportunity to revise and rethink the possible. 66

'Lady' Authors, 1 785-1 789

While I do not read the above novels as meta-discursive, or as direct statements about a developing network of novels, they exem­ plifY Minerva's network as it emerges in the mid- to late 1780s, and in particular its potential for an alternative to 'discernment' as a feminist critique. Sentimental conventions, now rearguard, provide novelists with the opportunity to revise commonplaces that delimit women's lives. Yet there are meta-discursive novels among the network, and I turn to them now to illustrate that some novelists are quite aware that they are 'networked', picking up conventions both through their experiences as readers and in reading critics' reviews of others' novels. To represent one's individual novel as contribution to an ongoing conversation repurposes the critical commonplace that circulating-library authorship is a reproductive, feminine mode of writing.

2:2 Rewriting the 'Feminine' Novel Debut novels by Anna Maria Mackenzie and Miss Pilkington (both of whom publish multiple novels with Minerva21), bookend the period ofI"" ne's initial rise. Mackenzie's Burton- Wood was published in 1783 by H. D. Steel when Lane was still a marginal player in the novel market, and Pilkington's Delia in 1790, when Lane renamed his press 'Minerva'. Both novels were published anonymously, but only Burton- Wood with the signature 'by a lady'. At the threshold ofLane's early rise, Mackenzie argues against any innate distinction between men's and women's writing, while also representing women's circulating-library novels as an important forum for inter­ vening in socio-political debate. Seven years later, Pilkington returns to both of these ideas, in order to endorse convention's potential for forging feminist visions. These novels could easily be read as circulating-library novelists' laments about the limitations of the genre, and in particular, what these limits reveal about most women authors' lack of education. In both cases, the author breaks from a sentimental narrative for meta-commentary on women's writing. While this break from convention is the least 'generic' moment of each novel, both authors ultimately rely on sentimental conventions themselves to valorize women's reproductive writing. 67

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While Mackenzie deviates from the Julie-inspired fantasy, the heroine's suffering and expected decline follow the sentimental model. The happily married Maria falls victim to a scheming rival, who has long entertained a violent passion for Maria's husband, Lieutenant Stanley.22 Letters highlight the heroine's angelic perfec­ tions. They also establish a distinction between men's writing (public) and women's (private). Mackenzie challenges this distinc­ tion in the final three letters of the novel, all written by the heroine's bosom friend, Lady Trevor, and directed to Maria herself In the first of these letters, Lady Trevor comments on Britain's contentious relationship with France, even identifYing herself as 'a bungling politician'.23 In an addendum to this letter, Lady Trevor's husband portrays women's private correspondence as much like their public writing, contending that men's writing is neglected because circu­ lating libraries overstock women's writing (which he deems 'volatile lucubrations'). Sir James compliments his lady - and women in general - for theirfeminine writing, only to add that this writing is best kept private, but ifthey insist on publishing, they should adhere to topics most suited to a female mind: 'She may moralize,- trifle,­ and change her opinion,- as often as the chameleon does his colour.- All this I allow, it is her forte.- But, for heaven's sake, what has she to do with politics?' (2: 141). Sir James also jokes that Lady Trevor's comments on France only prove his point - she muddles her topic. In an addendum to Sir James's addendum , Lady Trevor argues that it is education that makes men more adept than women in political commentary. She also laughingly notes that men seem to have no trouble attributing to women 'advantages' in what they call 'superficial points' (2: 142), asking: 'is he not seeking to deprive us of the very power to shine in our literary productions?' (2: 144). This is a rather surprising addendum to an otherwise conventional sentimental novel. In the penultimate letter, Lady Trevor returns to the primary narrative by providing her husband with a portrait of Maria's exemplary beauty and grace: 'Perhaps I shall not go out of my depth, when I attempt to paint a scene which you will possibly deem proper for a female pen' (2: 149). Lady Trevor is obviously sarcastic when she appears to concede that men's and women's writing is innately different because their minds are innately different. In her final letter, she recalls her earlier political commentary to represent 68

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women's writing - associated with the personal and, specifically, the letter - as already public. As such, women writers should take advantage of this new forum, beginning by exposing the limitations of their own education. Although Lady Trevor refers to notable women who have benefited from a liberal education (Cowley, Barbauld, Griffiths, Cartwright, More; 2: 155), she concludes by endorsing Maria's writing in such a way as to identifY Burton- Wood as a quintessential example of the feminine, reproductive novel: 'Read what Maria says . . . come, dear sir, and rejoice with the grateful Stanley and his happy wife' (2: 158). When Pilkington returns to the topic of feminine, reproductive novels, it is to retell the tragic sentimental story. Spirited, witty, and playful, though not lacking in feminine softness, Delia is less of the conventional heroine than the sweet and retiring Henrietta, her bosom friend and correspondent. Delia, an heiress, lives in rural Ireland. The narrative, set in 178 1 , begins in medias res. Delia's true love, Bloomfield, had departed suddenly for America several years earlier, apparently never to return. Heartbroken, Delia shares her secret only with Henrietta. Delia charms almost everyone she meets, including a retired university fellow, who describes Delia as an exception to a general rule: 'such astonishing quickness of appre­ hension! Such amazing facility of expression! '24 The handsome, young Lord Archer falls in love with Delia's keen intellect as much as he does her sensibility, as his letters show, and their correspond­ ence provides Miss Pilkington with the opportunity to develop Delia's character as well as to philosophize on women's nature. Much like Mrs Herman of Edward and Sophia, Delia defines 'virtue' as an active feature and as something that can be gained through struggle. A woman who gives way to sexual passion may even be more virtuous than one who has never erred, if the latter has never struggled against temptation (1: 155-6). If Delia begins her letter with the topic that dominates contemporary arguments about women's virtue - romantic ardour - she concludes by identifying an altogether different sort of longing: Tell me if this vital spark which glows with such animating warmth in my bosom when I contemplate the fair and beautiful productions of wisdom and genius - tell me if it had been refined and purified

69

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy by the lights of science, would it have arrived at similar perfection. As a conscious vanity sometimes whispers me it would! See! I have exposed to you the weakness of my heart! Correct its errors - but excuse its misapprehensions. (1: 160)

In this meta-commentary on women's writing, Pilkington suggests that 'lady' authorship has its limitations - as things are, women writers can hardly aspire to create works of genius, an argument that antic­ ipates not just Wollstonecraft but also Woolf's A Room of One's Own (1929). Archer makes a point of agreeing with Delia: 'how often have the most shining talents been lost in obscurity! How many brilliant imaginations have been extinguished in darkness!' (1: 167). And yet, in a marked contrast from Delia's line of inquiry, Burkean aesthetics permeate Archer's letter: ' [women's] minds, like [their] faces, may be more beautiful than ours, but still they are dissimilar , [to ours] (1: 161). Allowing that women should be educated on a more rational design, and then envisaging what the fruits of such education would bring, Archer imagines only that 'if women did not always write so well, they would at least write oftener than men' (1: 168), a position much like Sir James's in Burton- Wood. Archer's comments on women's education and artistic and intel­ lectual production are treated as the last words on the topic, as Delia never responds to this letter. Instead, her next two letters are to Henrietta. Henrietta is likely to lose the man she loves because she dares not confess her feeling before he admits his (he does not believe he is wealthy enough to marry her). Delia indicts women for helping to secure 'the chains which custom has imposed on our sex', even ifwomen have not 'forged them' (1: 174). She also laments that most women's talents are not fully developed, and yet it is Archer, not she, who provides the summary list of women writers who have against all odds flourished: Carter, Montague, Barbauld (1: 167). Delia does not associate herself with this list; instead, she returns to a more common fantasy - one that while not 'forged' by women writers, is strengthened by them. As Henrietta notes upon learning that Delia intends shortly to marry Archer, 'your heart you say is no longer Bloomfield's. My Delia, I fear you deceive yourself Why does his idea eternally recur to your imagination? Why is your fancy haunted with his form?' (3: 149). 70

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While Delia brings to mind Austen's Elizabeth Bennet in her unconventionality and wit, as the narrative progresses so as to fore­ ground Delia's eventual decision to marry Archer, Pilkington appears to renege on Delia's individuality. Contemporary readers hoping for another exceptional Romantic-era novel to reclaim will be disappointed in Delia's lapse into conventionality, but Pilkington probably never aspired to write an exceptional novel. It is no small irony that when this Minerva author most closely anticipates Wollstonecraft's arguments about human virtue in Vindication, she draws from Minerva's emergent network to make her point. After they are married and have a young daughter, Archer learns of Delia's previous attachment, recognizing all the while that she still loves Bloomfield. Succumbing to the c onventional consump­ tion,Archer heroically encourages Delia to marry her beloved. She refuses, as does Bloomfield, and both die shortly after Archer. Pilkington may feel, like Delia, that she lacks the education to rise above the greater majority ofwomen writers; but she also acknowl­ edges what she has learned from conventional novels by having the 'conventional' Henrietta (a Jane Bennet to Delia's Elizabeth) remind Delia of the sentimental heroine's credo. Like most of the authors discussed above, Pilkington softens the scandalous edges of her 'Julie 's' premarital love affair, permitting Delia passion prior to marriage but not its c onsummation. Though Archer passionately loves Delia, she never feels more than deep esteem and tender regard for him. In Rights, Wollstonecraft insists that these qualities are enough for happiness in marriage, but Pilkington and other novelists who publish with Lane early in Minerva's history generally disagree. Archer's mistake is being willing to settle for less than love. He accepts Delia's lack of passion for him because of the intensity of his own. If this is the classic mistake made by the villains of senti­ mental fic tion, from Lovelace onward, it is also affirmation of what was fast becoming ideology - woman's sex-based virtue, and what Thomas Laqueur calls the 'two-sex' mode1." No wonder Delia (like Wollstonecraft, an advocate for human virtue) prefers Bloomfield. Lane's early network of novels, inclusive as it is, offers a lingua franca of generic conventions. As a discerning feminist author, Wollstonecraft presumes that most women writers cannot see what she does - popular conventions reproduce prejudicial habits of 71

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mind. Lane's 'lady' novelists show instead that the undiscerning author who connects her work to that of the greater majority is well equipped to contest sexist mores.Whereas the discerning author is troubled by the ready availability of popular conventions, novelists who publish with Lane early in Minerva's history show that formu­ laic conventions create opportunity for innovation because they are so frequently circulated. Where Wollstonecraft's insights, as a social theorist and feminist, are especially incisive when she writes about writing, as both a reviewer and in Rights, she leaves the impression that there are two types of women writers - those who challenge convention and those subject to it. By Minerva's zenith period,Wollstonecraft has moderated her view. In Wrongs, she turns the analytic lens on herself and other feminist revolutionaries to show that while the revolutionary feminist is capable of discerning her own prejudicial habits of mind, her feminist discernment does not free her to transform her own emotions. Next we will see, however, that Wollstonecraft does not subject her prejudice against most women's novels to this same analysis.

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3

Wollstonecraft and the Revolution ary Feminist Novel: At a Crossro ads with Wordsworth

In delineating the Heroine of this fiction, the Author attempts to develop a character different from those generally portrayed. This woman is neither a Clarissa, a Lady G- , nor a Sophie. (Advertisement to Mary, 1788) In many works of this species, the hero is allowed to be mortal, and to become wise and virtuous as well as happy; by a train of events and circumstances. The heroines, on the contrary, are to be born immaculate; and to act like goddesses of wisdom, just come forth highly-finished Minervas from the head ofJove. (preface to The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, 1798)1

Wollstonecraft drafted her second novel in 1797, nearly a decade after publishing the first. In the prefaces to both, Wollstonecraft is preoccupied with other novelists' imitative heroines, although the nature of that preoccupation was to evolve. In 1788,Wollstonecraft identifies specific heroines (Rousseau's and Richardson's) as setting the pattern for most novelists, but in 1797 the pattern itself is the focus of her critique: 'highly-finished Minervas'. Lane's Press was at its height of popularity in the late 1790s, busily helping debut an unprecedented number ofwomen novelists. When Wollstonecraft uses 'Minerva' as a metonym for heroines, she suggests that most heroines spring from the same mould. The heroine is innately

Minerva and Romantic Fantasy

virtuous, wise and moral, but the hero is permitted individuality and development; he becomes wise and virtuous. He will also be happy, as the novel will conventionally end with his marriage to the innocent, self-possessed virgin - and the promise of their enduring love. In Rights ofWoman ,Wollstonecraft identifies love as one of many passions that spur the individual to action - but with a caveat: 'Love is the common passion, in which chance and sensation take place of choice and reason.'2 While Wollstonecraft has been said to advocate relatively sexless marriages, this is only partially true. After acknowledging the 'herculean' efforts necessary for writers to free themselves from convention,Wollstonecraft represents herselfas just such a writer, and actually envisages love as it could be, were men and women educated similarly and if there was no such thing as 'feminine' virtue: True voluptuousness must proceed from the mind - for what can equal the sensations produced by mutual affection, supported by mutual respect? . . . Without virtue, a sexual attachment must expire, like a tallow candle in the socket, creating intolerable disgust. 3

'True voluptuousness' originates in 'choice and reason', and should stand the test of time. Wollstonecraft was not, however, to translate her vision of everlasting love into the novel that is often read as her promised sequel to Rights ' Revolutionary feminist novelists take up the sentimental novel, and in particular, He/oise, with gusto in the 1790s in order to authorize individual expression as 'legitimate social protest'.s In Wrongs, Wollstonecraft connects her writing project both to novels by most women writers and to those authored by revolutionary feminists like herself, e.g. Helen Maria Williams'sJulia (1791), Eliza Fenwick's Secresy, or, the Ruin on the Rock (1795) and Mary Hays's Memoirs ofEmma Courtney (1796).Williams's Julia, Fenwick's Sibella and Hays's Emma are all beloved by exemplary men who either die for love of them or whose dying words are of and for them. Wollstonecraft was unable to complete Wrongs (published post­ humously in 1798), although there is ample evidence in the text itself and in her notes that Maria's illusions about her lover, Henry 74

Wollstonecraft and Revolutionary Feminism

Darnford, will be shattered. Darnford will tire of her not long after they begin a life together. In what follows, I c ontend that Wollstonecraft critiques her compatriots' apparent indifference to the gendered politics of sentimental conventions as they operate in general use. Of particular concern to Wollstonecraft is the fantasy at the heart of the sentimental novel - everlasting heterosexual romantic love. Wollstonecraft wants other feminist revolutionaries to see that as long as this fantasy belongs to everybody who writes novels, it is the responsible author's obligation to show, again and again, in unremitting detail, that most women writers are subjected by commonplace, culturally constituted desires, and hence by their own imaginations.6 But rather than stop here,Wollstonecraft shows that the discerning feminist writer is still subject to unbidden because conventional emotions. As such, Wrongs will be positioned at a crossroads with emergent Romantic poetics, as exemplified by Wordsworth's 180011802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Early on Wordsworth contends that what differentiates his poems from others is that 'the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling.'7 Wordsworth connects his poetics to the systematic work of revolutionary writers like Wollstonecraft and Godwin but skips the analysis,jumping to the conclusion that in the present day, public taste is 'depraved': 'Language and the human mind act and re-act on each other.'s In an age of prolific print, the poet must struggle to cultivate his own habits of mind, so as to expe­ rience genuine feeling rather than the manufactured version that critics suggest was the stock-in-trade of the circulating library. In Wrongs,Wollstonecraft demonstrates that she, and by extension, other revolutionary feminists, are belaboured by feelings that conflict with their self-constituted habits of mind. Wollstonecraft is not the only feminist revolutionary novelist to anticipate Wordsworth's ideal poet. By reading Wrongs in light of Fenwick's Secresy and Hays's The Memoirs of Emma Courtney, I show that all three authors repurpose sensibility to challenge convention and reformulate new visions. Fenwick and Hays draw freely from Minerva's shared circuit of sentimental c onventions, as does Wollstonecraft. Only Wollstonecraft, though, subjects the shared circuit to analysis. 75

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That Wollstonecraft singles out her own work from that of the majority connects her -with canonical Romantic poetics. Discernment in her case, however, reveals the revolutionary feminist's capacity to critically reflect on the disparity between her beliefs and her personal desires and feelings. A concluding section to this chapter shows that at Minerva's zenith, the conventions offeminist discern­ ment are part of Minerva's network, and that novelists adapt Wollstonecraft's style of feminist discernment for an undiscerning model of authorship.

3:1 Fenwick's Caroline Ashburn: A New Vision Born of Self-fashioned Habits of Mind While Fenwick published the epistolary novel, Secresy, she chose William Lane to pay the production costs, for which she would be responsible if the book undersold - not Lane 's typical practice 9 Isabel Grundy describes Fenwick's choice of Lane as 'hard to under­ stand', given that ' Fenwick later said that she found most of the Minerva list unreadable.'lO That Fenwick rejects a ladylike signature for the more democratic (and perhaps for some readers , crass) 'by a woman' suggests that she was not tailoring her novel for Minerva's network. Indeed, in a variation on the discerning author, Fenwick distances readers from sentimental conventions by showing that the revolutionary feminist subject (Caroline Ashburn) remodels her habits of mind, so as to feel differently from the sentimental heroine (Sibella Valmont). Caroline's reconstituted feelings broaden the scope ofthe sentimental novel, providing a radically new version of roman­ tic love by challenging the sentimental heroine's credo (only love once) as well as conventions for 'feminine' virtue. Fenwick's heroine, Sibella, is raised by her uncle,Valmont, to be obedient, docile and passionately in love with his adopted son, Clement Montgomery. Valmont, romantic when young but now misanthropic from disappointment in love, lives only to create the romantic dream he longed for and lost: the sort of love Rousseau envisages for Sophie and Emile." Valmont intends Clement to despise fashionable society and tests him by sending him abroad for two years, promising him financial independence on his return. 76

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He also forbids Clement to treat Sibella as anything but a sister, presumably to make their reunion all the sweeter. Montgomery fails the test - he admires wealth and status and indulges in affairs with beautiful women. Once back at the castle, Clement cannot conceal his pleasure in polite society from the infuriated Valmont, who withdraws his financial support and sends him to London to learn a profession. On the eve of this second separation, Sibella summons Clement, asking him to formalize their vows by consum­ mation of their love - in her eyes, this will be a true marriage. Clement is weak, desiring Sibella and yet terrified ofValmont. He allows himself to have it both ways , making love to Sibella but insisting that she say nothing of their 'marriage' to Valmont. When Valmont discovers that Sibella is pregnant, he disowns Clement, but first he reveals that he is Clement's natural father. Had Clement only followed Valmont's instructions, he would have bequeathed Sibella and her fortune to him. To continue to live in luxury (and share his wealth with a new lover) Clement marries a woman old enough to be his mother. Sibella is wise, brave, beautiful and true, and Clement is utterly ordinary His letters show that he is not even a villain - only a handsome mediocrity. Sibella's love for Clement - passionate, all encompassing, and persisting in his absence - is represented as a natural outgrowth of her elevated mind. Sibella presumes that Clement experiences love exactly as she does: Our minds, our principles, our affections are the same; and, whilst I trace his never to be forgotten image within my breast, I know how fondly he cherishes the memory of mine.12

We know, fully and entirely; that our hearts must cease to throb with life, when that love is extinguished. (p. 123)

Oh Montgomery; that love at one and the same instant created on our sympathizing hearts! (p. 191) 77

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Sibella's situation excuses her delusion. She was everything to Clement when they were children of nature, recluses living in a moated castle. Sib ella's friend and c orrespondent, Caroline Ashburn, discerns early in the novel that Clement is unworthy of Sibella. By informing Sibella of her opinion, Caroline holds herself to her own high standard of friendship - to speak the truth. As she describes, Sibella and Clement love each other out of habit. If they had not been so isolated, Sibella would have never chosen Clement as her lover, and Clement, in turn, would have loved many women with 'a trivial love: neither arising to any height, nor directed by any excellence' (p. 141). In the shadows is the real sentimental hero, Clement's friend Arthur Murden, who expresses his love for Sibella in a letter to Caroline: 'Absent or present alike, she fills my every vein. I love her, Miss Ashburn, as - oh misery! As she loves Clement' (p. 257). In Secresy, characters are elevated by the degree to which they are capable of sustaining love for an absent object. Like Wordsworth's Poet, Murden is 'affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present'.13 In rec onstructing the sentimental subject, Fenwick makes Caroline, and not Arthur, her visionary. For some time Caroline appears as a second heroine, on the brink of a love affair of her own. Readers see that she begins to fall in love with Murden on witnessing his compassion for an Indian woman who has travelled overseas to meet her son, only to find that he has been sent back to India by Murden's uncle. Destitute and ill with fatigue, the woman is treated coolly by the family - until Murden arrives home: 'Yes, Sibella . . . this very elegant, fashionable, handsome, and admired Murden immediately lifted in his arms the poor miserable despised object, from whose touch others had revolted' (pp. 87-8). Murden's feelings and principles align with Caroline's, but Fenwick subtly clues readers to see that his desires will not. Caroline's love will be unrequited. The sentimental hero or heroine, if unattached, should be capable ofloving a worthy object. Murden meets Caroline before he meets Sibella, but - also true to type - he is already in love with a vision of his own making. When Murden recognizes his ideal in Caroline's description of Sibella's beauty and character he promptly falls in love: 'Hast thou not a thousand and a thousand times, in thy waking and sleeping visions, described a being thus 78

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artless, thus feminine, yet firm, such an all-attractive daughter of wisdom?' (p. 200). After Murden meets Sibella, unrequited love provokes him into a frenzy. By contrast, Caroline, also a victim of disappointed love, mitigates her passion by reason. This heroine will not suffer the sentimental decline: 'Yes, I confess, I have loved you! Yet, because I could not possess myself of the strong holds in your heart, shall I sink down and die?- No! No!- I bade the vague hope begone.- I refused to be the worst of slaves, the slave of self' (p. 285). Because Caroline trains herself to experience disappointed love differently than would a sentimental heroine, her love - for both Murden and Sibella - engenders a new vision, which she literally puts to paper in a letter to Murden: 'I would unite you to Sibella, who in turn shall be roused from the present zeal of her affections. Her soul will renounce the union her mistakes have formed, when she knows Montgomery as unworthy of her as he really is' (p. 224). Caroline's vision never comes to fruition. Sibella miscarries after her shock at Clement's betrayal and, shortly after, begins the expected decline. Murden, in turn, is 'unmanned' by Sibella's pregnancy (p. 321) , and he grows ill from his shock at seeing her. In a final scene, Sibella and Caroline visit Murden on his deathbed. Whereas Murden had raved initially after his shock and is now immobile, Sibella still enj oys c omparative health. Murden reminds her of their first conversation. When he told Sibella he was dying of love and had asked her what she would do if Clement felt as he did, she had uttered, ' die also.'When Murden recalls her words as if to remind her ofa forsaken vow, Sibella 'start[s] from the bed in a phrenzy':' Great God! Do you reproach me with living! . . . Know you not I expired when -! Oh am I not dead already' (p. 356). Sibella dies the next day, but her dying words , to Caroline, recall the latter's vision: ' ''here,'' laying her hand on her bosom, "some­ thing swells as if - as if I yet had - affections!'" (p. 358). Sibella's awakening affections give us reason to surmise that she might have recovered from her shock had it not been for Murden's deathbed reminder that she had typecast herself as a sentimental heroine, unable to survive her lover. Nicola Watson concludes that, 'despite her searing indictment of the plots of femininity promoted by Rousseau, Fenwick is unable 79

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to imagine an alternative source offemale power to "true feeling" . . . [Secresy comes] inevitably and abruptly, to a dead end.'!4 But as I have suggested, Fenwick does imagine an alternative to sentimental feeling - or more to the point, Caroline does when envisaging that Sibella would be capable ofbreaking with the sentimental heroine's credo - never love twice - once recognizing that Clement was unworthy of her love. Caroline's vision, while never actualized, persists as a hint, a future possibility that the author projects for readers by way of Sibella's reawakening emotions. Murden, by contrast, cannot recover from the shock of seeing his beloved pregnant - a conventional mindset that Caroline forewarns him against (p. 285). Earlier, I offered a similar reading of The Sentimental Deceiver (Maria would be happier with Edmund, rather than her childhood sweetheart, who betrays her). In both cases, the message is conveyed through the narrative rather than an authorial aside. Where the author of The Sentimental Deceiver is subtle, though, Fenwick is explicit. In The Sentimental Deceiver, readers are subject to the sentimental heroine's credo even as the author implies that it would be desirable if the heroine could love again. By contrast, Fenwick breaks openly with this convention. Caroline, like Wordsworth, has remodelled her own feelings. Unimpeded by c onvention, she envisages a future where a woman can retrain her mind - and, accordingly, her heart. Recalling Bawarshi's definition of authorial 'invention' as 'the site in which writers act within and are acted upon by the social and rhetorical conditions that we call genres ',is Fenwick represents Caroline as free to remodel her own subjectivity. Much as Wollstonecraft represents herself in Rights, Caroline appears 'hercu­ lean' , capable ofdiscerning the structures (from literary conventions to morals and manners) that constitute gendered subjectivities. It is not surprising that an unworthy character like Montgomery finds Caroline's reasoning capacities repugnant (p. 2(0) , but Fenwick is clear that even the worthy Murden never imagines Caroline as his ideal. By contrast, in The Memoirs ofEmma Courtney, Hays permits herself the freedom to revise the male imaginary Though Emma Courtney is a second example of how the revol­ utionary feminist project anticipates Wordsworth's idealized poet, 80

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this heroine does not possess the same 'herculean' habits of mind as Fenwick's Caroline. Indeed, Hays continuously impresses upon readers Emma's gendered subjectivity, something of which the heroine herself is painfully aware in her efforts to attain independ­ ence and (to borrow Wollstonecraft's phrase) human virtue. Even as Emma's inability to act precisely as she would like to parallels Wollstonecraft's project in Maria, we will see that on one subject, the fantasy of everlasting romantic love, Hays permits her heroine perfect freedom.

3:2 Hays's Emma Courtney: A Romantic Revision to the Romantic Fantasy Much like Fenwick, Hays constructs her novel so that a mediating subjectivity stands between readers and the primary narrative as it unfolds. In Secresy, this subjectivity is Caroline; in Memoirs, it is Emma herself The novel is composed of two sets of letters: the middle-aged Emma's to her adopted son (these letters read as a memoir), and then the youthful Emma's earlier letters to this young man's father, Augustus Harley, as well as to her philosopher friend, Mr Francis (based on William Godwin). In the memoir, Emma traces the events that engender her passion for Harley, supposedly to instruct his son against allowing a similar passion to rule his life. Emma's letters to Harley dominate the middle section of the novel. Emma pursues Harley with unremitting intensity, insisting that, as they share similar principles, tastes and habits, it is only reasonable that he love her back.!6 Many of Emma's letters go unanswered, leaving only silence for her to interpret. Miserable, she copes by writing Harley more letters. When Emma learns that Harley is already married, she fights suicidal feelings by reminding herself that she can still serve others. She also agrees to marry Montague, a volatile young man who has long loved her, but only after he understands that she has no heart to give. Once married, Montague is periodically haunted by the fact that Emma had loved Augustus madly. Emma believes herself content and even happy, especially once becoming a mother, but her intense emotions resurge when Harley is mortally injured near their house. Harley confesses to 81

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Emma that he has long loved her, and he asks her to be his son's guardian. Emma falls into a fever shortly after his death and Montague overhears her delirious ravings about Harley. Later, to Emma's horror, and despite her efforts to intervene, he takes his own life after impregnating her maid and strangling their infant. In the preface, Hays contends that she is engaged in a project similar to that ofAnn Radcliffe andWilliam Godwin, both ofwhom use novels to ' [delineate] the progress, and [trace] the consequences, of one strong indulged passion, or prejudice' (p. 3). Because Hays takes on a 'hackneyed sentiment' of contemporary novels - love she has the added difficulty of treating her subject with any ' originality': to 'accomplish this, has been the aim of the author' (p. 3). When in pursuit of her beloved, Emma breaks with the rules offemale decorum, first informing Harley of her love for him and, later, offering herself as his mistress (she suspects he is unwilling to marry because his inheritance is contingent on his remaining single). Hays, who associates originality with progressive, non-prejudicial thinking, does not imagine that her novel will appeal to readers of contemporary novels. Her projected audience is 'the feeling and thinking few' (p. 5). While in her letters, Emma is bold and forthright, Hays also demonstrates that as a female subject, Emma feels daily and inexorably the constraints of a feminine character: ' Cruel prejudices!- I exclaimed - hapless woman! Why was I not educated for commerce, for a profession, for labour? Why have I been rendered feeble and delicate by bodily constraint, and fastidious by artificial refinement?' (p. 32). Emma's writing provides her with the freedom she does not experience in everyday life. She is keenly aware, however, that 'prej­ udice' has influenced her character. Emma is as self-aware as Fenwick's Caroline, but self-awareness in this case leads to reflections on her own limitations. For example, when Mr Francis treats her as he would a talented young man (,you have talents, cultivate them, and learn to rest on your own powers' ; p. 36), Emma tells her mentor that she cannot be the fully self-actuated subject that he imagines: ' I respected his reason, but I doubted whether I could inspire him with sympathy, or make him fully comprehend my feelings. I conceived I could express myself with more freedom on paper' (p. 39). Emma's clear yet impassioned voice is a defining feature in her letters to Harley: 82

Wollstonecraft and Revolutionary Feminism It has been my misfortune seldom to think with the world, and I ought, perhaps, patiently to submit to the inconveniences to which this singularity has exposed me. (p. 95)

However romantic (a vague tenn applied to every thing we do not understand, or are unwilling to imitate) my views and sentiments might appear to many, I dread not from you, this frigid censure. (p. 99)

Hays shows that Emma's 'romantic singularity', or her capacity to form principles counter to convention, is inseparable from her sensibility. As Emma remarks to Francis: 'The mind capable of receiving the most forcible impressions is the sublimely improve­ able mind! ' (p. 86). Love, Hays suggests, is natural - but when a person possesses a strong mind and emotions, love becomes something larger than self and propels the individual towards sublimity. Emma frequently begs Harley to tell her frankly whether or not he has a prior attachment. Because she reads Harley's refusal to provide her with a straight answer as a sign of his interest, she continues her unremitting pursuit of him, a11 the while reminding him of what he has to lose. Emma's unapologetic self-praise has not a hint of irony and is similar in tone to Wordsworth's expos­ tulations on the true Poet. Whereas Wordsworth's poet is free to connect with all human beings across space and time, Emma's intense feeling, elevated sentiments and capacity to connect are focused exclusively on Harley: I could have loved you, had you permitted it, with no mean, nor common attachment. (p. 95)

You have contemned a heart of no common value. (p. 128)

83

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I perceive my extravagance, my views were equally false and roman­ tic - dare I to say -they were the ardent excesses of a generous mind? (p. 159)

Much like Wordsworth, Emma works to change her readers' feelings by changing their habits of mind. Emma suspects that Harley cannot help but be prejudiced against her forthrightness about her love for him, and she tries to persuade him to think differently, believing that once he alters his habits of mind, he will feel as she does. In most contemporary novels, a villainous version of Harley would seduce Emma or ridicule her. A heroic Harley would disdain her. 17 But a Harley who returns Emma's love is astounding. As mentioned above, Hays claims to direct her novel to a select few - those who already know how to read discriminately. Likewise, she distinguishes between Emma's indiscriminate reading of circulating-library novels and her careful attention to one novel, He/ai'se:

I subscribed to a circulating library, and frequently read, or rather devoured - little careful in the selection - from ten to fourteen novels in one week. (p. 18)

Ah! With what transport, with what enthusiasm, did I peruse this dangerous, enchanting work!- How shall I paint the sensations that were excited in my mind! (p. 25)

Though an avid reader of circulating-library novels in her youth, only St Preux's intense love for his ideal woman influences the remainder of Emma's life. is While readers from Hays's day onward have read Memoirs as an endorsement of (rather than instruction against) Rousseau's brand of intense passion, Brian Michael Norton has recently suggested that Hays is in earnest.19 According to Norton, Hays shows that her desires are not 'authentically her own in any simple sense ' ; instead, they are the product o f her circumstances, some singular but others spurred by her 'feminine' character.20 But while Hays 84

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critiques society for not providing women with multiple arenas to exercise their talents and passions, in the larger novel, Emma's love for Augustus is a sign of her potential for new associations and, by extension, radical new visions. As Emma explains to Francis, she now has something to teach the philosopher: 'You, who honour the pernicious ambition of an Augustus Caesar, as bespeaking the potent energetic mind!- why should you affect to be intolerant to a passion, though differing in nature, generated on the same principles, and by a parallel process' (p. 147). Emma never enj oys the masculine-style independence that her mentor Francis encour­ ages her to attain, but her love for Harley enables her to break free from convention, at least as a writer. Hays does not idealize roman­ tic love, and neither does Emma, who recognizes with cool judgement that her intense love for Harley is a sign both of her elevated character and also of her limited sphere. Instead, Hays treats romantic love as an exemplary site for the revolutionary female author, whose readers will discern - and, moreover, appre­ ciate - the sublimity of a new vision, a hero who is not subject to common desires. For Wollstonecraft and Hays alike, striving to see anew is often painful and solitary work, as 'second nature' is reinforced by personal feelings, dispositions and habits of mind as well as the language of everyday life, from commonplaces and cliches to popular literary formulas. Wollstonecraft's private correspondence and Godwin's editorial comments show that she, like Hays, did not anticipate the 'common' sort of reader (\Vollstonecraft contrasts the 'stage-effect' of most novels with the 'delineation of finer sensations' in the select few21). Wollstonecraft does not permit herself the same freedom as Hays when writing for the discerning reader. Hays ultimately rejects the conventions that shape gendered subjectivities when envisaging a hero who is not subject to common desires.Wollstonecraft makes no such concessions to revolutionary feminism because she regards visions like Hays's as premature. As I now put forward,Wollstonecraft embodies conventional sentiments in her hero and heroine, even while portraying them both as uncommon human beings and as advocates of revolutionary politics. Wollstonecraft curtails her vision in order to show her compatriots that Maria writes herself into a c onventional story. 85

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3:3 Curtailing the Revolutionary Feminist Imagination in Wrongs I have numbered each passage ofWollstonecraft's unfinished preface to Wrongs for ease of reference: One: The Wrongs ofWoman, like the wrongs of the oppressed part of mankind, may be deemed necessary by their oppressors: but surely there are a few, who will dare to advance before the improve­ ment of the age, and grant that my sketches are not the abortion of a distempered fancy, or the strong delineations of a wounded heart. Two: In writing this novel, I have rather endeavoured to portray passions than manners. Three: In many instances I could have made the incidents more dramatic, would I have sacrificed my main object, the desire of exhibiting the misery and oppressions, peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society. Four: In the invention of the story, this view restrained my fancy; and the history ought to be considered, as of woman, than of an individual. Five: The sentiments I have embodied. Six: In many works of this species, the hero is allowed to be mortal, and to become wise and virtuous as well as happy, by a train of events and circumstances. The heroines, on the contrary, are to be born immaculate; and to act like goddesses of wisdom, just come forth highly-finished Minervas from the head ofJove.22

Wollstonecraft's emphasis on her heroine's love story has struck many critics as odd in light of her purported agenda, 'the desire of exhibiting the misery and oppressions, peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society'. One of the most interesting lines of inquiry to date is the question of the degree to which Wollstonecraft can control her agenda when using senti­ mental conventions. As Mary Poovey suggests, Wollstonecraft is derailed by the conventions for sentimental novels, losing her main object in the emotional details of one extraordinary woman's life.23 In an important extension of this argument,Watson proposes 86

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that Wollstonecraft overestimates her capacity to shape how the sentimental heroine's extreme emotion will be received - the conventions themselves undercut incisive socio-political critique, tempting critics to portray revolutionary feminist authors as erring sentimental heroines.24 But scholars have generally overlooked Wollstonecraft's topical reference to heroines, the 'highly-finished' or 'immaculate-born' heroines of the popular press.25 Analysing Wrongs in light of Minerva's shared circuit of sentimental conven­ tions demonstrates that Wollstonecraft intends to create the effect of an author who has lost control of her stated 'main object'. Eve Tavor Bannet establishes that eighteenth-century women writers wielded the novel 'as an instrument of real power'26 that could transform how readers envisioned themselves and their lives. These novelists turned their heroines into exemplars - that is, 'constructed and embodied ideals of c onduct'.27 In passage five of the preface, Wollstonecraft applies the exemplary tradition to prolific print culture. The 'sentiments' that Wollstonecraft 'embodies' in her hero­ ine both are and are not different from those that shape the 'highly-finished Minervas' ofpassage six. Unlike the Minerva, Maria will be 'allowed to become virtuous through a train of events and circumstances ' . However, because Wollstonecraft refrains from imagining a world outside 1790s Britain, Maria will not find happi­ ness in romantic love. The personal, emotional and even raw tone that Wollstonecraft cultivates in Wrongs supports rather than deviates from her 'main object'. Wollstonecraft wants her readers to see that as long as sentimental conventions belong to everybody, even the most enlightened women are not free from the commonplace fantasy of the Minerva novel. They are still subject to men's desires, which are reflected in and perpetuated by women's popular novels, and in particular, the fantasy of the 'immaculate-born' Minerva. Wrongs begins in a madhouse, where Maria awakens from a heavy medication to discover that her husband, George Venables, has imprisoned her and absconded with their infant daughter. Maria meets fellow inmate, Henry Darnford, through annotations on the books he lends her. One of these is He/ai'se, and St Preux's passion for Julie distracts Maria from her agony at the loss of her daughter, as does Darnford's 'impassioned' note in the margin about Rousseau's 'genius'. Maria presumes that Darnford shares her same 87

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sentiments, precipitating her infatuation with a man who, if imperfect, possesses 'the generous luxuriancy of a noble mind'.2s The two meet frequently, temporarily derailing Maria's plan to rescue her daughter. Maria also sets aside for some time a memoir designed to instruct her daughter, which will dominate the second half of volume 1. Maria writes about her marriage in the hopes that she will 'shield her [daughter] from the misery, the tyranny, her mother knew not how to avoid' (p. 75). Like the cliched female reader, Maria had seen in Venables what she had longed to see: 'I [imagined] him superior to the rest of mankind . . . in short, I fancied myselfin love - in love with the disinterestedness, fortitude, generosity, dignity, and humanity, with which I had invested the hero I dubbed' (p. 1 1 6). But Venables proves selfish, vulgar and profligate. After Maria learns that Venables has offered her sexual favours to his friend to pay off a debt, she 'abjures' her husband's name and his rights as husband (p. 143). The scene reads like many a sentimental heroine's sacred vow, and yet Maria declares her rights not only as a feeling woman but also as a British subject. Venables feels himselffully in the right and pursues his wife with the fervency of a Lovelace (though his ardour is for her uncle's fortune). In her memoir, Maria appears as a discerning author. Once capable of recognizing her quixotic tendencies, she uses her morals and conscience to forge her own path. Although Maria does even­ tually write her memoir for her daughter, it is Darnford who reads it. Darnford's intellect and sensibility make him an ideal reader, and he writes a warm and fervent response, praising her in particular for her strength of mind: 'Ties of this nature could not bind minds governed by superior principles; and such beings were privileged to act above the dictates of the laws they had no voice in framing, ifthey had sufficient strength of mind to endure the natural conse­ quences' (p. 164). If Darnford had loved Maria before, his love is now apparently of a higher order - passion, mixed with veneration and esteem for her human virtues: In former interviews, Darnford had contrived, by a hundred little pretexts, to sit near her, to take her hand, or to meet her eyes - now it was all soothing affection, and esteem seemed to have rivalled love . . . What could have been more flattering to Maria?- Every 88

Wollstonecraft and Revolutionary Feminism instance of self-denial was registered in her heart, and she loved him, for loving her too well to give way to the transports of pleasure. They met again and again; and Darnford declared, while passion suffused his cheeks, that he never knew what it was to love. (pp. 164-5)

In R(ghts,Wollstonecraft contrasts the common passion, love, to the 'holiest' bond, friendship - holy, because a meeting of souls. For men and women of sensibility and intellect, however, love may be infused by true friendship, a potent combination that engenders 'true voluptuousness', or a marriage between the mind and the senses. Maria believes that she finds such a lover in Darnford, but Wollstonecraft's last 'hints' to her novel suggest otherwise. In falling for Darnford, Maria c ommits what Mellor describes as a 'cognitive error'.29 Maria once again moulds a man into what her heart and mind desire: 'Maria now, imagining that she had found a being of a celestial mould - was happy,- nor was she deceived.- He was then plastic in her impassioned hand - and reflected all the sentiments which animated and warmed her' (Wrongs, p. 165). This same omniscient narrative voice suggests that Darnford will disappoint: 'could he, feeling her in every pulsation, could he ever change? Could he be a villain?' (pp. 90-1). Yet it should be noted that Maria's second cognitive error differs in kind rather than degree from her first. Maria had projected her senti­ mental ideals on Venables and had misread all his actions accordingly, until they were in such close quarters that his insensibility and avarice became undeniable. In contrast, Maria responds initially to Darnford because of who and what he is: a man of keen sensibility whose feelings provoke him to look outwards, beyond himself 'I shall weary you,' continued he, 'by my egotism; and did not power­ ful emotions draw me to you,' - his eyes glistened as he spoke, and a trembling seemed to run through his manly frame,- 'I would not waste these precious moments in talking of myself.' (p. 85)

As Darnford shares Maria's political sensibility and literary taste, they should have experienced lasting love, and surely would have, had he any capacity to reflect on his most personal desires. Maria does not realize that she temporarily shapes her lover into her own 89

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masculine ideal - a mould that he does not resist until his desire wanes, as Wollstonecraft strongly hints it will by showing that Maria sees her lover through the prism of her own romantic dreams. For example, Maria takes Darnford's narration of his life as evidence of a 'noble' mind though he expends much of it cataloguing the women he has met, including his desire for women of the street (p. 268). In contrast, on matters unrelated to love, Maria's thinking is revolutionary. Most importantly, Maria regards a madhouse servant, Jemima, as her equal because of her keen intellect and potential for intense feeling - and even promises her that should her daughter be alive, Jemima will be her second mother. Wollstonecraft appears likely to have brought this promise to fruition; in a fragment titled 'the end', Maria attempts suicide following Darnford's desertion but decides to 'live for her child', whom Jemima has rescued (pp. 176-7). Critics argue that Maria's friendship with Jemima is the real revolutionary relationship in Wrongs, along with the life Maria presumably lives with her daughter and Jemima after Darnford's desertion. 30 While I agree, it is important to add that Maria's love for Darnford appears to exceed that for even her daughter - she is suicidal after his defection. By refusing to permit Maria everlasting romantic love,Wollstonecraft sets out to disappoint not only Maria but also herself and other revolutionary feminists. In Rights, Wollstonecraft argues: 'make women rational creatures, and free citizens, and they will quickly become good wives and mothers.'31 Wollstonecraft posed this argument about ordinary women, reserv­ ing the 'voluptuousness' of her vision for extraordinary women. The only new vision that Wollstonecraft permits herself in Wrongs is to omit heterosexual romance altogether. For Wollstonecraft, this is not revolutionary: it reflects the depressing state of reality in counter-revolutionary Britain.32 In Rights Wollstonecraft represents herself as having transcended common habits of mind. In Wrongs, she exposes an uncomfortable relationship between Minerva authors and revolutionary feminist authors like herself In 1790s Britain, not even the revolutionary feminist can transcend commonplace feelings. 'True voluptuousness' is a vision, a feminist dream. Until men are taught to think and feel differently, the woman of sensibility will be disappointed in love, 90

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and her disappointment makes her much like the quixotic female reader of the popular critical imagination.Wollstonecraft's position on popular conventions is not unlike Wordsworth's: both treat the popular novel as a site for the reproduction and dissemination of predictable feelings. Whereas Wollstonecraft works to draw those feelings into plain sight, showing that they persist even in the most enlightened of author-figures, Wordsworth rejects them altogether, permitting himself the freedom to argue that his poetry charts unknown territory - drawing readers into a new future that their own reconstituted feelings will help to create. Gender politics, it appears, intersects with discernment in Wrongs, exposing the Minerva novel as a dynamic yet still highly qualified site of Romantic exchange. Wollstonecraft suggests that women's popular novels restrict her own freedom as an author, both for political reasons (she thinks it necessary for feminist writers to intervene in the reproduction of popular fantasy) but also for the more deeply personal reason that as things are, women's self­ constituted habits of mind do not free them from the present day. If, unlike Wordsworth, Wollstonecraft owns her debt to Minerva's shared circuit of conventions, she does not grant to most female novelists what she attributes to herself and her compatriots - the capacity to mindfully rework popular conventions so as to contest the values they uphold. By Minerva's zenith, novelists are reacting to Rights, and even repurposing Wollstonecraft's arguments for an 'undiscerning' model of feminist authorship, as in novels by two authors whose work has since been identified by only partial iden­ tifiers: a 'Miss Pilkington' (whose debut novel, Delia, was discussed in Chapter 2) and a 'Miss Taylor' 33

3:4 Revolutionary Feminism Revisited: A Rej oinder to Critics of 'Feminine' Novels With Rosina (1793), Miss Pilkington furthers the feminist inter­ vention she began with Delia (1790). Rosina falls in love twice with her vision of her lover, the self-serving, rakish Raymond. Raymond may desire her but he intends to make her his mistress, planning to marry a much older, unattractive woman for her money: 'Raymond 91

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appeared to Rosina's prejudiced imagination superior to the rest of mankind.'34When highlighting the discrepancy between reality and fantasy Pilkington makes a similar move to both Fenwick in Secresy andWollstonecraft in Wrongs, but in her case, the discrepancy valor­ izes reproductive, feminine novels. Rosina is a novel reader, and her first comment about novels appears to position her as a 'discerning' author. She damns novels with faint praise (novels are not the first thing a young woman should read, but they are harmless when not deceitful). Rosina's second comment about novels shows an alter­ native agenda than to discernment: If fortune has strewn my path with thorns and thistles, am I to be censured if I sometimes step aside into the inviting labyrinths of fiction, to recruit my exhausted spirits, and to retrieve my peace; to gather the fruits of unbought experience, and the tender blooms of visionary joy. In this congenial realm, every sublime virtue, every noble talent, every tender affection, that exalts and dignifies human­ ity, seems to expand itself. (3: 43)

Like Austen in Northanger Abbey, Pilkington identifies novels as a source of sublimity and vision - though unlike her illustrious contemporary, she references no particular novels. Later, Pilkington lays claim to a different agenda from Austen's altogether, when introducing a poet-figure who takes pride and pleasure in the ephemerality of his work. Spenser has written a poetical novel, and he explains to Rosina's false lover, Raymond, why he does not seek lasting literary fame: 'In my idea, a man is more rationally and usefully employed in cleaning his dirty alleys, making strait his crooked paths . . . than in erecting superb and stately structures to attract the admiration of the misjudging multitude' (3: 1 1 5). Spenser adds that after a friend had critiqued his novel, he decided to feel differently about his work. Previously, he had held on tightly to every scrap of his writing; now he will give a page to anyone who needs 'paper to light a pipe with' (3: 1 18). Still, he takes deep pleasure in writing: 'scribble I will till fate shall close the volume of my life ' (3: 1 19). Raymond reads Spenser's novel aloud to Rosina and several other ladies (or what remains ofit, given his tendency to use parts as scrap 92

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paper). Its heroine falls in love with an extremely handsome and well-read peasant, though she is initially unaware of her feelings. Only once he is gone does she discover the truth. She also correctly surmises that the peasant is noble by birth. Spenser's commoner­ cum-nobleman was, by 1793, fast becoming one of Minerva's most popular formulas, something of which Pilkington seems keenly aware. As Raymond reads aloud, Rosina and the other ladies pleas­ urably anticipate the novel's arc - a peasant-hero, handsome and well read, is probably not a peasant after all, but (as one lady surmises) 'a dignified baron, or some illustrious chieftain' (3: 135-6) 35 Rosina tells Raymond that she finds Spenser's novel true to her own life. Later, much like his poetical heroine, she eventually disc overs the true state of her heart: she is in love with her cousin, Hector, who has long loved heLAs previously argued, novelists who borrow Romantic redefinitions of authorship and literature are able to articulate more forcefully Minerva's collective authorial model. The Spenser episode, while tangential to the main narrative, reads as the author's meta-commentary on Minerva's network, which Miss Pilkington associates with both feminist vision and a lack of discernment. Emma Clery argues of Radcliffe's gothics that the poetic heroine is a stand-in for the author herself and an invitation for readers to associate Radcliffe's writing with high art 36 By contrast, in Rosina, Spenser's poetical novel is a stand-in for circulating-library novels, and in particular, novels that advance a feminist vision of everlasting love. Once Rosina sees past the illusion she has created, she rejects Raymond and marries Hector. This time she is not deluded. Akin to Wollstonecraft's 'true voluptuousness', Hector's love is not the 'common' sort: Passion, he knew; like beauty's favourite object, was transient, and that the lasting affection of the heart requires to be held by bonds less subject to decay. A similarity of taste, a union of soul, a mind enlightened by knowledge, and a heart enamoured of virtue. (4: 48)

Pilkington allows her heroine what Fenwick only envisages - and what Wollstonecraft disavows entirely. Throughout her career, Wollstonecraft accuses most female novelists ofbuying into a fantasy that is not their own. Pilkington takes ownership of this networked 93

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fantasy, using Rosina as a mouthpiece for meta-commentary on popular novels. Certainly in response to critical reception of the female novelist as 'stamp' ,and possibly as a rejoinder to Wollstonecraft's patronizing portrayal of sentimental novels in Rights, Pilkington associates the greater majority of novels with the 'sublime virtue' ofvision. Each novel in itselfmay be ephemeral,37 but their common conventions ensure continued revision to the sentimental fantasy of everlasting love. Wollstonecraft's brand of revolutionary feminism is a variation on discernment, or the perceived overproduction of the popular press. Two debut novels by Miss Taylor, provide a more explicit rej oinder to discernment, and in both its variations. In the first, Taylor refers directly to male reviewers, who often elevate them­ selves by denigrating women's novels, and in the second, to Wollstonecraft. Taken together, these novels draw from Minerva's shared circuit of conventions to revalue the predictable output of most female writers, which Taylor associates with feminist vision. Josephine (1799) begins with an arranged marriage between the heroine and a young man of nineteen. Josephine, at age fifteen, is gawky and tomboyish and does not much interest her new husband (although apparently there is sufficient interest to consummate the marriage). The young husband goes off almost immediately to travel abroad, leaving Josephine pregnant. In a playful variation on the romantic fantasy, after several years abroad and an affair with another woman, Josephine's husband returns home and falls madly in love with another young lady, only to discover that she is already his wife (he was told that Josephine is dead; as Josephine herself has grown into a lovely young woman, he does not recognize her). This novel would not be particularly notable were it not for Taylor's playful and assertive authorial asides, such as when she uses the cliched reader-turned-writer against the critic himself 'What trash!' exclaims a male cynic, who has honoured this produc­ tion so far, possibly, as to open a page here and there. If this one comes under his inspection, I see him throw the book down with a dissatisfied air. 'I t is this sort of works which ruins all the young women of the present age', he exclaims;-'dark eyes, brown hair, and taper fingers! Why need the girl, for girl it must be who wrote this, 94

Wollstonecraft and Revolutionary Feminism descend to the exactest minutiae of descriptive? These novels delude the girls, give them ideas they never would have had without them; and every female now, who possesses the often described brown hair, dark eyes, and taper fingers, expects to meet all the adventures encountered by a heroine.' 'Good God, Sir! what illiberality to judge and decide upon the merit of a book you have merely dipped into! You have not read through one volwne.'38

Taylor's authorial asides are adaptations of the 'ladylike ' apologetic preface. Deadpan earnestness is the rhetorical rule in these apologias: the lady requests gentle treatment because of her situation and her sex. Taylor plays with the rhetorical c onstruction of lady author­ ship, conjuring up a less transparent, more playful 'lady' than 'by a lady' , and directly addressing herself to her readers - and not the critics: Only three things can prevent me from again wielding my pen in the service of the public:- the first, if, upon presentation, this should meet with a chilling refusal . . . second, if I should chance to commit matrimony, which, let me here observe, is not at all an improbable notion:- the last, and as fancy most will allow the principal impediment, would be, if a certain grisly tyrant, ycleped Death, should chance to seize me in his ruthless arms . . . Kind reader, if there is any one line, or sentiment, which you can approve, in the book you have been perusing, it will ever be remembered, with the most heartfelt gratitude, by THE INCOGNITA. (2: 238-9)

This 'incognita' is someone in particular. Taylor forcefully inserts her personality into her authorial asides, pushing readers to identifY the fictional ' I ' with an actual author who has written the novel that they hold in their hands - a novel circulated by Minerva: 'As winter is advancing to us with hasty strides, I must use the utmost expe­ dition in having my work conveyed up to town, to be presented by a friend to the Proprietor of the Minerva-Press' (2: 227). As Minerva draws more and more female novelists into the market, the language and conventions of feminist discernment circulate outwards, as is clear from Taylor's Rosalind (1799). Rosalind, 95

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a deserted orphan, is befriended by the 'majestic looking' young Miss Clayton, a character fashioned after Mary Wollstonecraft herself Miss Clayton was a majestic looking woman, about two-and­ twenty, a pupil of Mrs Wollstonecraft's, and a staunch defender of the rights of women. She had not that mean opinion of her own sex that females in general have, whose understanding is so far superior to the women that are usually encountered in the polite circles: she loved a ball, and could describe a fashionable headdress with the utmost precision; but when she met with a female who could converse with rationality upon any topic like herself, she was peculiarly gratified, and preferred her discourse to that of a man's.39

Miss Clayton is neither a villain nor a figure of fun; she becomes a close friend of the heroine. This friendship allows for Taylor's remarkable addition to Wollstonecraft's philosophy - not having a mean understanding of women 'as they are', something of which Wollstonecraft has herself often been accused. And yet, Taylor reframes the remarkable and the exceptional as something that is attainable for every reader: Assure yourself that the genius of Miss Clayton is not in the slight­ est degree superior to the genius of Miss any body else. My father brought me up with a taste for polite literature. His particular delight consisted in enlarging my understanding, and teaching me to place a just value upon those abilities which I received in common with others. (1: 130-1)

Miss Clayton is even awarded the fantasy of everlasting love, as she meets a man who appreciates her: 'Sir Henry, with an understanding of a superior order, was entirely unwarped by prejudice; such a being could not fail of being very interesting to a mind like Miss Clayton's' (1: 147). Miss Taylor is clear that she has fashioned the hero herself 'Sir Henry St. Albans being a most wonderful favourite of mine (by the way he ought, as I made him, and fashioned him after my own fancy)' (2: 91). 96

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It is impossible to know whetherTaylor, clearly familiar with the language ofWollstonecraft's Rights, was aware ofWollstonecraft's dismissive treatment of novels and female readers. But in modelling Miss Clayton after Wollstonecraft, Taylor orients feminist politics to the undiscerning author. As Taylor suggests, everyday novelists can write new meaning into the old fantasy of everlasting love. It is, perhaps, a belief in common abilities, rather than extraordinary ones, that allows Minerva novelists to fashion for themselves a collective authorial model out of what, to use Austen's phrasing in Sense and Sensibility, is merely 'worn and hackneyed out of sense and meaning'. 40 We will see that Minerva novelists continue to invest in the fantasy of everlasting romantic love through the Press's run, even as they incorporate newly borrowed material into their larger network. Next, I show that in the increasingly counter-revolutionary climate of the 1790s, Minerva novelists transpose the seemingly personal fantasy of everlasting romantic love onto an unmistakably socio-political one - the 'providential' fantasy, reinvigorated by Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), that each individual is happiest when occupying his or her rightfully born place in the social order.

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Section I I

The Revolution Debate in Britain: Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

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Section Overview

Having illustrated that in the mid- to late1780s, 'lady' novelists made the sentimental novel central to the formation of Minerva's early network of novels , Section Two illuminates a distinctive generic shift in this network. In many cases, the sentimental novel, and in particular, the impassioned epistolary T , takes on a notably provi­ dential tone as the language and arguments of the pamphlet debate incited by Edmund Burke 's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) infiltrate period novels. In the providential novel, the hero or heroine is often an orphan of unknown origins. As we will see, with rare exceptions, these novels affirm Burke's endorsement of a hierarchical social order by representing extraordinary beauty, talent and feeling as God-given gifts of the noble-born. At the same time, these novels also often undermine this representation by showcasing the trials endured by a noble-born character prior to discovering 'who and what he is'.! A novel whose hero is morally improved by his commoner's upbringing suggests that noble character is at least in part made, not born. This suggestion parallels William Godwin's argument that government shapes individuals ' feelings and habits of mind in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), while undermining Burke's defence of so-called timeless British tradition in Reflections. Minerva's providential novels will be shown to influ­ ence Godwin's 1794 novel, Things As They Are: or the Adventures of Caleb Williams, an exchange that, it is argued, foregrounds the forgotten poetics of Romantic exchange. As in Section One, my emphasis on the Minerva novel is twofold. First, we see how Minerva's shared circuit of popular conventions

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

enables novelists to contribute actively to pressing debates. Their c ontributions would probably startle influential writers like Wollstonecraft or Godwin, were they able to recognize that in Minerva's larger network, popular conventions are a source of innovation rather than simply a constraint on intellectual and imaginative freedom. Second, it is demonstrated that Minerva's providential novels are an exemplary site in the shaping of Minerva's collective authorial identity. The sentimental novel connects Lane's lady novelists across space and time, as was illustrated in Section One. By the early 1790s, novelists, already primed to take feeling seriously as an episteme, learn from providential conven­ tions and language that popular literary formulas are a shared social text that summon conventional or commonly held feelings, a notably unromantic perspective on the composing process that resurfaces in Godwin's Things As They Are, a novel that fictionalizes key tenets of Political Justice. In Things As They Are, Godwin recounts Caleb's persecution by the squire, Falkland, for whom Caleb once worked as a secretary Godwin claims to have written his novel backwards, but after completing it, he revised the conclusion. This revision has a more reconciliatory tone than the original (in the original, Caleb remains a victim, and his adversary, Falkland, a villain; the revision has Caleb recognizing that both he and Falkland are at fault). Godwin, I will suggest, presumes a fixed quality to formulaic conventions before he actually uses them, at which point he surprises himself, refining his argument so as to represent a shared social text as the best possible foundation for socio-political change. Godwin's use of popular conventions brings him into contact with a structure of feeling that builds over Minerva's zenith. Early experiments with the commoner­ to-nobleman formula draw heavily on the sentimental novels of the previous decade. Given the prominent role that the sentimental heroine played in Lane's early publications, it is not surprising that Minerva novelists' initial experiments with this emergent formula generally feature commoners-to-noblewomen. The formula develops in use. By the mid-1790s, authors prolong the period before rein­ stating their hero so as to better exploit the formula's affective potential. The hero is literally out of place, a displacement he often acutely feels, both internally and in his interactions with others. I 102

Section Overview

emphasize the hero because the providential novel echoes the new gendered subjectivities that relocate Britain's centre ofinfluence from the court to the professions and the middle-class home .' Heroines signal their secret nobility through beauty, grace and modesty; heroes, by talent and industry. The hero, freer to contest his destiny, proves a central site for novelists' greatest contribution to the French Revolution debate in Britain: a challenge to revolutionary writers like Godwin andWol1stonecraft, who tend to presume that knowledge production is limited to the 'herculean' few. Godwin seems unaware that Minerva novelists are already using providential conventions to contest Burkean logic. Still, he is less antagonistic to the popular novel than Wollstonecraft in Wrongs and appears to learn something from formulaic conventions as they operate in use. In Things As They Are, Godwin uses providential language in such a way that anticipates both Wordsworth's 180011 802 Preface and, somewhat paradoxically, Shelley's 'A Defence of Poetry'. Godwin, like Wordsworth, presumes that most writers who rely on popular conventions have servile habits of mind. And yet, anticipating the inspired poet-figure of Shelley's 'Defence', Godwin also foregrounds an interactive relationship between his author-figure and a larger social text.

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In Reflections, Burke reminds his mostly middle- to upper-class British readers of what they stand to lose should they neglect the traditional vertical ties of responsibility among the higher and lower orders: A free constitution; a potent monarchy; a disciplined army; a reformed and venerated clergy; a mitigated but spirited nobility . . . a liberal order of commons . . . [and] a protected, satisfied, laborious, and obedient people, taught to seek and recognize the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions, in which consists the true moral equality of mankind. 1

Burke's logic pervades the formula that characterized Minerva novels at the height of the Press's popularity. The secret nobility of the hero or heroine (foundling, swapped at birth, washed ashore after a shipwreck etc.) is the engine of this formula.Yet this secret is open: the hero's exceptional good looks and virtuous mind clues readers to his real identity, as does his pervasive feeling of discom­ fort when living the life of a commoner. When the hero steps back into his rightful place, the Burkean social order is restored: the lord of the manor bestows smiles and services to tenants and labourers, who return their happiness, gratitude and productivity. This formula is the central feature of the ' providential novel', also characterized by a constellation of words and phrases denoting a divinely inspired social order. Words like 'destiny', 'fate' and 'heaven',

Providential Adaptations, 1 790-1794

or phrases like 'we are not born for each other', clue readers to see that lovers who believe themselves to be star-crossed are in fact destined to be together. Providential novels also often literalize commonplaces about divine justice, guilt and innocence. For example, if a hero is unjustly accused of a crime, as in Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest (1791), his face will probably convince onlookers of his innocence, a theme supported by phrases such as 'crime always leads to its own detection' and 'the omniscient eye of Providence'. The Castle of Otranto (1764) is, of course, an early model for Minerva's providential novels. Supernatural clues align to point an accusing finger at the false prince, Manfred, and to reveal the hand­ some peasant, Theodore, as the real prince of Otranto. The conceit of the novel is that it was written before the age of reason, when portents, omens and signs all make manifest the working of a higher order. Otranto hit a cultural nerve in the 1790s, if measured by Minerva output. As in Walpole's romance, signs are revelatory. In Minerva novels , however, providential signs are neither terrifying nor supernatural. Rather, they are represented as fundamentally natural, constituted by and within human actors themselves. The most important of these signs is feeling, most commonly, the uncanny and intense connections that blood relations separated by crime or misfortune feel for each other when they first meet. Almost as common is the sympathy and allegiance that the hero's innocence and virtue ignite in other noble-minded characters. Intended readers can hardly misread these signs and will anticipate the usual surprise: the hero's discovery that he is noble .' This chapter explores the close relationship between the senti­ mental novel, which was already on its way out by the late 1780s, and the commoner-to-nobleman formula, which Minerva authors refashion and popularize in the 1790s. While the sentimental novel becomes increasingly unfashionable in the 1790s, its endless iterations have already acclimatized readers and writers to an epis­ teme of feeling - Mary Wollstonecraft describes this episteme in A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) as 'A kind of mysterious instinct . . . supposed to reside in the soul, that instantaneously discerns truth, without the tedious labour of ratiocination'.3 This episteme is central to the Revolution debate, and as such, helps to 105

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explain Burke's eloquence in Reflections, by which I mean both his efforts to move his readers by summoning their prejudices as well as the way that readers were indeed moved, whether in sympathy or in anger. Although I use 'eloquence' much as John Stuart Mill would in 1833, as 'feeling pouring itself forth to other minds, courting their sympathy, or endeavouring to influence their belief, or move them to passion or action' ,4 Burke shows that eloquence is made easier when the writer summons feelings that are generally shared by his intended audience. This point bears directly on Minerva's early experiments with the commoner-to-nobleman, as this formula reflects the prejudices of a counter-revolutionary age. Even as novelists have not yet in the early 1790s fully developed the affective clues that will become a powerful means of destabi­ lizing providential logic, the Revolution debate provides Minerva novelists with the language to identify feeling as a source of c ollective knowledge. To see these novelists' uptake of this language, first we must recall that Burke reorients sensibility to counter-revolutionary politics because he recognizes this episteme as his most effective weapon at a crucial moment in his nation's history. I then suggest that in 1793 Godwin down plays the power of emotion, missing an important opportunity to treat feeling as a tool for dismantling prejudicial habits of mind. Godwin may have learned to do this from Minerva's network of novels, a spec­ ulation that will be supported in Chapter 6 when contending that in 1794, Godwin writes an anti-providential novel, and that in so doing, he develops a nuanced perspective on the power that popular literary conventions exert on individual actors. Minerva novelists' most powerful interventions in the French Revolution debate in Britain come through careful negotiation with conven­ tions that, when summoned, allow the author to be immediately understood by their intended audience. The providential novel, which relies on a series of embedded clues to readers, teaches readers and writers alike to be attentive to the ways that popular conventions can be negotiated and revised.

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4:1 Habituated Feelings: Emotion as an Episteme in the Pamphlet Debate The argument that English liberties have existed from time imme­ morial was formulated in the seventeenth century.5 In Reflections, Burke recalls this argument to remind his largely middle- to upper­ class readers of their social responsibilities at a time when industrialization, urbanization and the growing market economy were weakening the tradition of noblesse oblige 6 By addressing his remarks to a French reader, Burke can describe that which he claims his countrymen need no reminding of British liberties are anchored by feeling 7 According to Burke, recent events in France and the political climate in Britain require him to explain the rationale for the English social order. Burke does not rely on reason alone, also using pathos to appeal to his readers' emotions, e.g. his dramatic account of Marie Antoinette's desperate flight from her assassins. Lamenting that 'the age of chivalry is dead' (p. 89), at least in France, Burke insists that aristocratic refinement and regalia are more than varnish: they serve a social function, turning mere sexual interest or fear of another man's power into the elevated feelings that lend 'dignity' to ' obedience', 'pride' to 'submission' and 'exal­ tation' to 'servitude' (p. 89): [In England] we have real hearts and blood beating in our bosoms . . . We fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affec­ tion to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility. Why? Because when such ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected. (pp. 99-100)

Burke counts himself among the habituated: 'You see, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confess that we are gener­ ally men of untaught feeling and that instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree' (p. 1(0). The problem is that Burke would prefer not to make this point at all, as he well knows that the feelings of reverence and adulation he identifies as 'natural' are not strictly speaking nature but the product of people habituated to experience them.As Burke 107

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states, the times demand that he depart from the wisest aspect of British policy, 'following nature' , which he describes as 'wisdom without reflection, and above it' (p. 46): Now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the differ­ ent shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order. (p. 90)

Burke is a savvy rhetorician; his trope of concealment (particularly the behind-the-scenes role it plays in shaping British character) allows him to have it both ways. That is, he calls attention to the construction of public sentiments while obscuring policy-makers. It is policy that habituates all, from lord to tenant or husband to wife, to fulfil the duties and responsibilities of their station so that the different shades oflife harmoniously coexist. Burke's rhetorical tactic mirrors the image he crafts, the bland assimilation of the private sentiments of policy-makers into custom and policy. S As Socrates argues of the ideal government in Plato's Republic, we see in Burke's Reflections that ' all these things ought to happen without the notice of anyone except the rulers themselves '.9 Godwin picks up this point precisely in 1793, in Political Justice. The portrait Godwin paints of so-called natural feelings differs dramatically from Burke 's. That government creates seemingly innate distinctions between the upper and lower ranks keeps thousands of men abject, always working, and inadequately compensated.!O Though often portrayed as an anarchist, Godwin does not agitate for the immediate dissolution of government. As things are, government remains necessary for two related reasons: first, to ensure that individuals do not transcend their rights by harming others; and, second, to keep people focused on the common good. Education, and in particular the advancement of ideas through print culture, will eventually perfect the human 108

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race. The slow process of this natural evolution means that revo­ lution, when it comes, is non-violent: 'As the people form the last step in the progress of truth, they need least preparation to induce them to assert it. Their prejudices are few and upon the surface ' (p. 1 1 5). In the 1796 edition of Political Justice, Godwin takes fuller account of government's pervasive power, showing that individuals incorporate prejudicial viewpoints into the most private aspects of their lives: Perhaps government is, not merely in some cases the defender, and in others the treacherous foe of the domestic virtues. Perhaps it insinuates itself into our personal dispositions, and insensibly commu­ nicates its own spirit to our private transactions.11

Whereas Burke contends that the British heart is to be trusted over novel theories about what man might become, Godwin argues that as things are, thoughtful individuals find that they are not at heart who they would like to be. Addressing himselfalong with his readers, Godwin asks: Which of us is there who utters his thoughts, in the fearless and explicit manner that true wisdom would prescribe? Who, that is sufficiently critical and severe, does not detect himself every hour in some act of falsehood or equivocation, that example and early habit have planted too deeply to be eradicated? (p. 49)

As Godwin implies in 1793, prejudices that skim the surface of our thoughts are residual rather than active - we are aware of them, primarily because they contradict our values, beliefs and emotions. We can infer that by contrast, those prejudices that run deep are hard to access because we experience them as a part of our emotional and constitutional makeup - second nature. Like Burke, Godwin exposes the policy behind seemingly native dispositions, yet in 1793 he delimits his discussion of emotion to his famous ' Fenelon' argument: emotional ties between family members or lovers impede justice, which Godwin defines as serving the greater good. One must save the philosopher (Fenelon) from a fire, rather than one's own wife or mother (p. 53). 'Justice is strict and inflexible' 109

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and is a better barometer of human potential than feeling, which is prejudicial and thus perpetuates injustice (p. 55). Noting that Godwin read Reflections multiple times over the 1790s when writing and revising PoliticalJustice, Mark Philp empha­ sizes that 'Godwin may have felt the distance politically between himself and Burke, but he remained powerfully drawn to the more organic picture of the social and political world that Burke had developed.'12 While both Burke and Godwin act as theorists of the habitual, that is, they theorize why men and women think and feel as they do, in 1793, Godwin would certainly have rejected emotion as an episteme in itself, a potential resource for the individual's efforts to better himself I read Godwin's pointed rejection of emotion as yet a further sign of sensibility's afterlife as providential logic. In other words, Burke's invocation of prejudicial emotion is so powerful that Godwin rejects it altogether, relying instead on the cool voice of reason.13 Minerva's early providential novels show that while novelists are in line with Burke, treating feeling as an episteme in its own right, they also recognize feeling's potential to undermine providential logic. As we will see, novelists recognize that to invoke feelings that are powerful because they are shared, or what Burke calls prejudice, means being easily and immediately understood by intended readers. Sentimental lovers are soul mates, idealized lovers whose tenderness and affection for each other is too good for the world they inhabit, but the commoner-to-nobleman formula reaffirms the world as it is. New market demands, especially critics' demand for counter-revolutionary themes, prime novelists to be especially sensitive to the shared social text that their borrowed material reflects. Novelists negotiate two competing epistemes, the sentimental 'I', with its potential for revolutionary sentiment, and the providential 'we', which literalizes counter-revolutionary values. If novelists were not already aware that literary conventions consti­ tute a powerful social text, the demand for providential fictions makes them so.

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4:2 From the ' I ' to the 'We': The Politics of Feeling and Minerva's Sentimental Novels 'It must not, shall not, cannot be intended by Providence that the most compleat of Nature's works is destined to such a fate.' (Blenheim Lodge, 1787) 14

'It is ordered otherwise, and I trust, my love, you will try to conquer an attachment, which has embittered your existence.' (Adeline; or the Orphan, 1790) 15

'Oh,' cried she, 'they were made for each other! Heaven certainly intended it from the beginning.' (Child of Providence, 1792) 16

'You, Sir George, are designed by heaven to move in an exalted station.' (Susanna Rowson, Fille de Chambre, 1792) 17

The four novels cited above feature heroines of humble or unknown origins: a miller's daughter, two foundlings and a lady's companion. Like the sentimental novels discussed in Section One, these novels are love stories- but now with a twist. Sentimental love becomes a sign of the social order preordained by God, a trend that begins as early as 1787 with Blenheim Lodge. The novel opens with the heroine, S ophia, cast from her uncle's house and demoted from heiress to a miller's daughter. Her uncle, Sir Walter 111

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Milbanke, had raised Sophia alongside his own children, only to discover that she had been foisted on the family by an imposter. As it turns out, Milbanke has lied, but for some time, Sophia lives at the miller's house, taking on the spinning wheel with a becom­ ing humility: ' I am fond of the employment, and think it rather a more natural one for the daughter of a miller, than drawing, or that sweet harmonizer of the soul, music' (1: 127). Milbanke's son Edward has long loved Sophia, and he disobeys his father by c ontinuing to court her. When Sophia's rights are restored, she marries Edward. This early example of the commoner-to-noble­ woman anticipates what will become the formula's three defining features: one, the heroine accepts her humble place in the social order, rejecting her noble suitor's offers to elevate her to his station; two, the commoner-to-noblewoman's virtues make her a feminine exemplar, elevating her above others who are in theory higher in station than she; three, while her unknown origins and great beauty subject her to the typical sexual plot (pursued by licentious noblemen), her greatest travails are often more mundane. She must earn a living, and while sometimes allowed the ladylike role of companion she usually takes up a more plebeian occupa­ tion, e.g. a dressmaker, an actress, a maid. 's Additionally, like other novels across Minerva's network, Blenheim Lodge includes a Julie­ figure, a young lady (Emily) who has fallen prey to a libertine. Sophia feels great sympathy for Emily, but c onventionally, the fallen maiden dies. Just three years later, in Adeline; or the Orphan (1790), the author sets up a similar dynamic between the heroine and a Julie, but permits hers to survive. This deviation from convention is enabled by the author's cultivation of providential feeling, a marker of the formula's maturation. Adeline is who she is because of her innate sensibility, but also because ofher commoner-to-noblewoman status: her innate morality guides her to feel precisely as she should. The providential novel literalizes Burke's argument that British subjects are best off when they are taught to think and feel in such a way as befits their station. What Burke feels bound to explicate, the providential novel is designed to conceal. As novels like Adeline suggest, this design assists novelists in adapting to an increasingly counter-revolutionary market even while advancing the feminist 112

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yet undiscerning model for authorship that we saw took shape across Minerva's network of'by a lady' novels. Adeline opens with a brief history of how MrWarren, a surgeon en route to India, comes to adopt Adeline. When at sea, Warren meets a young officer, Mr Clermont, and his beautiful French wife. Clermont hints at a melancholy past that has rendered both him and his wife, both noble by birth, exiles. Though Warren is of humbler stock, 'he, the child of sentiment and benevolence', is worthy of their friendship (1: 12). When the noble couple dies, Clermont in service and his wife of grief, Warren is unable to locate the young orphan's relations (Clermont is an assumed name). Warren and his wife raise Adeline as their own child, not informing her of her history till she is nearly grown. Warren has thought the matter through. He wants Adeline to feel as if she has a natural right to his paternal affection. He also hopes to ensure that his son, Charles, will feel only brotherly affection for her (Adeline might some day be restored to her rights, and would look higher than a surgeon's son for her husband). In the meantime, Adeline and Charles have become close friends with their genteel neighbours, Edward and Emma Woodford. Charles falls in love with Emma and Edward with Adeline. The author notes that the Woodfords are higher in station than the Warrens, making marriage between the families unlikely. Like other commoner-to-noblewomen,Adeline's beauty, elegance and modesty attract the affection of aristocrats, in her case, the spinster, Lady Mary. Despite her intentions, and intending to keep her feelings secret, Adeline falls in love with Lady Mary's nephew, Lord Frederic Melville. She also shows her superiority by becoming fast friends with Frederic's sister, Lady Louisa: Adeline, though she loved Emma Woodford with the affection of a sister . . . though she acknowledged that in Edward Woodford, the most amiable manners were joined to an engaging exterior ­ yet her admiration of Lord Melville and Lady Louisa exceeded whatever she had felt before; she beheld them incontestably supe­ rior to any two people within the limits of her observation; their attractions were such as seize the mind with irresistible force. (1: 1 19-20) 113

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As Adeline enters Lady Mary's social circle, some of the ladies treat her scornfully, causing Adeline to feel out of place: 'Perhaps I had been wiser and happier, if I had staid with those friends who despise me not because I am an orphan, indebted to their bounty' (1: 170). Still, Adeline's greatest troubles begin when she discovers her true identity. If her first clue is the intense and otherwise unaccountable feelings that connect her to her grandfather, a Duke, and his sister, she is stricken by their cool formality when she resides with them and longs for her childhood home. When the Duke tries to force her hand in marriage,Adeline joins her maternal grandparents, only to have them also insist that she marry the man of their choice. Adeline's appearance as a Clarissa is short-lived, operating primarily to establish what she has lost in discovering her origins: family affections, to be sure (as in most providential novels, middle-class values are affirmed) , but also the more revo­ lutionary 'liberty to judge and act for [her]self' (2: 254). Once her birthfather reappears (evidently not dead after all) Adeline marries her beloved, Lord Melville. Readers wait an entire volume for this marriage. While Minerva novelists often multiply the barriers between the lovers so as to prolong drama, the author of Adeline introduces a disgraced Julie, creating an opportunity for Adeline to 'judge and act' for herself. As if to ensure readers' awareness of the intertextual reference, this author names the fallen lady Julia. Julia is no passive victim of a libertine. She had freely eloped with a dashing suitor, betraying her long-devoted lover, Beauford. Since the former's desertion, Julia (now a mother) feels precisely what she ought: ' I have broken the bonds of filial duty and affection, I am abandoned by my parents and scorned by the world' (2: 214). Adeline's feelings, however, challenge convention, as do her actions, and with no hesitation, she befriends Julia, nursing her back to health. When Julia praises Adeline for her kindness, Adeline insists: ' I have done nothing, my dear friend . . . but what common humanity dictated - I deserve no praise' (2: 215). To fully gauge the significance of this scene, let us turn briefly to an earlier one. Recall that Adeline's foster-brother, Charles, is in love with Emma Woodford. Emma's father disapproves as he has higher aspirations for his family than a surgeon's son and commands 114

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her to marry someone else. Desperate, Emma plans to elope with Charles and asks Adeline to accompany them. The author makes a point of emphasizing Adeline's deep discomfort at the request: \Vhen left alone,Adeline sunk into a state of the most painful melan­ choly.- Her acquiescence was not the effect of a conviction that she acted right - it was the consequence of her friendship for two people, whose request she had not resolution to reject; and with sorrow she yielded to a necessity that could not be avoided under such circwn­ stances. (2: 131)

The author of Adeline navigates complicated moral situations with a delicate touch, endowing Adeline with all the right feelings. That Adeline experiences no internal turmoil at befriending Julia cues readers that she, the feminine exemplar, feels just as she ought. Adeline's friendship helps Julia survive her disgrace - and, moreover, to love again. Convention has it that the fallen heroine is rarely permitted to live - and when she does, she is usually shuttled off to a convent for a life of repentance: as Wollstonecraft describes it, 'a woman who has lost her honour, imagines that she cannot fall lower . . . pros­ titution becomes her only option.'19 The author of Adeline boldly rewrites this script by permitting the fallen Julia the sentimental fantasy. Beauford still adores her, though Julia refuses to listen to his proposals while her deserter lives. The author kills him off and the novel concludes with the promise that Julia will marry Beauford after the prerequisite year of mourning (3: 242). There is one last point to make about Adeline. Adeline may have been born for Lord Melville (2: 235) but in her privileging of'liberty ofjudgment and action', as well as in her finer feelings, she resembles her adoptive father, Mr Warren, a point that the author highlights by summoning providential language: 'whatever was her fate, he should always be her dear, her most beloved father' (2: 226). When novelists subject counter-revolutionary conventions to revision, they create the conditions for direct contribution to the French Revolution debate in Britain. The commoner-to-noble­ woman formula endorses nature, as exemplified by the ties of consanguinity, but as revealed by Adeline, Minerva novelists also 115

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recycle sentimental convention to suggest a more natural family relationship than blood ties. In The Child of Providence (1792), the author once again uses sentimental logic to connect adoptive father and daughter, but on this occasion introduces the possibility of adoptive parental influence on the heroine's character and even destiny, a possibility that novelists exploit more fully as the decade advances. When the beautiful infant, Augusta, is washed ashore in a cradle after a shipwreck, she is found and raised by a Mr Monckton and his sister, Rebecca, both of whom presume she is noble. When Augusta learns of the shipwreck, she imagines that there is a preordained reason for the mystery of her birth: ' I will patiently and humbly wait for the time which seemeth best to my heavenly protector. One day I shall most assuredly, learn how, and by whom, I was placed here' (1: 1 1 5). While Monckton deems Augusta 'the child of Providence', his use of the term differs from hers. Monckton thinks less of a future disc overy than of what he has been able to provide for Augusta in the here and now: Child of Providence ; I have always loved you and given you a parent's love (1: 81);

Gracious Providence, I have been the happy means of fostering unprotected innocence. I have made you my OWIl. I cannot place you in affluence, but I have stored your mind with the best resources in any situation in life, and your education is such, as would give lustre to the highest. (1: 99)

Monckton and Augusta share the same acute sensibility, leading Monckton, a widower, to feel a greater kinship to his adopted daughter than he does to his own son, Henry. When Henry falls passionately in love with Adeline, Monckton's sister draws the seemingly obvious conclusion: 'They were made for each other! Heaven certainly intended it from the beginning' ( 1 : 163). Rebecca's excitement is contagious and Monckton finds himself longing for Augusta to marry into the family. Augusta, however, 116

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feels no more for Henry than she would a brother: 'something whispers to my heart, that husbands are loved differently' (1: 172). Determined to wait to marry until she disc overs her true parents, Adeline's gratitude to Monckton leads her to accept Henry's proposal nonetheless. The author evokes the feminist subtext I traced in Section One. Henry is handsome, worthy and madly in love with Augusta - but his feelings are primarily sensuous (he cannot keep his hands off her). Concerned, Monckton warns Henry: ' That his passion seemed to be the rapture of voluptuous sense, not the rational, warm , and glowing affection, that was to last all his days, and the only one which could ripen friendship, in such a bosom as Augusta's, into a mutual love' (1: 186). Although Augusta convinces Henry to respect her boundaries and the pair appears to look forward to some degree of marital happiness, she does not have to marry Henry after all. He is thrown from a horse on the eve of their wedding day and dies from his injuries, followed shortly by Monckton, events that precipitate what was fast becoming the conventional commoner-to-noblewoman drama (a licentious, plotting nobleman; the heroine's struggles to earn a living). Three volumes later, when Augusta is reinstated as Countess Brandon, she marries her beloved, a nobleman, at which point she reflects on her first engagement with the flourish of sentimental logic: 'there was no sympathy between us. Our minds were not congenial' (4: 200). As providential logic, or what we might call the 'we' of a hier­ archical social order, comes to replace the 'I' of the sentimental novel, authors show their flexibility in negotiating competing subgenres. In Child of Providence, the feminist brand of sentimental love that I have tracked through Minerva's earliest novels now conveniently justifies a hierarchical social order.As described previ­ ously, novelists treat their own novels as exchanges in a network and so should we. As also demonstrated, novels that comment directly on circulating-library authorship itself often provide a special opportunity for analysis in that they illuminate transitions in how authorship and literature are defined and understood. Anna Melvil (1792) is such a novel. Through meta-discursive reference to popular novels and their critics, this Minerva author takes as her subject the c ompeting clues of providential and sentimental drama, 117

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illuminating for readers the politics of negotiating the value-laden conventions of a shared social text. The heroine ofAnna Melvil is, oddly, not Anna Melvil but Emma Roscommon, a wealthy, beautiful and benevolent young widow who devotes her time and money to a second 'Millenium Hall' (the author makes this direct reference to Sarah Scott's 1762 novel20). Emma lives the single life less by predilection than necessity. Emma was hotly pursued before marriage, but all of her suitors fell short of her ideal, which she had gleaned from novels: ' From living a good deal in the country, and having a taste for romances, she acquired a delicacy of sentiment, and formed an idea of a lover which she was not likely to find realized.'21 When in London, Emma meets Lord Desmond, in whom she sees all the perfections of her ideal, and falls deeply in love. Readers know, however, that while Desmond admires Emma, his heart already belongs to the foundling, Anna Melvil. This providential narrative has the usual sentimental origins. Early in the novel, Desmond likens himself to St Preux, calling Anna his Eloisa. Anna's emaciation and fevered cheeks signal her heroic efforts to master her love. Anna shelters at Emma's estate to avoid her lover's marriage proposals, which she knows his father, Sir Marmaduke, will never endorse. For most of the novel Anna remains quite literally in the background at Millennium Hall while Emma's thoughts and emotions orient the narrative. Anna is the commoner-to-noblewoman, and yet it is Emma who inspires prov­ idential language, a point that the author emphasizes as an aside: Desmond and Emma were 'two persons, who seem born for the hero and heroine ofa romance' (1: 140). Others reiterate this thought. As Anna tells Emma, once she learns of Emma's love for Desmond: 'Lord Desmond loves you, 'tis impossible he should not return his passion and be mutually happy' (3: 55). Desmond's sister, in turn, is astounded when Emma tells her the marriage is off' I protest . . . your sentiments are so very like Desmond's that I cannot yet help thinking you were born for each other' (3: 95). Unlike the Lovelaces of sentimental fiction, Emma's love is unselfish; once she learns that Desmond loves Anna, she lets him go. As we saw in Section One, however, the heroine or hero does not generally suffer from unre­ quited love, an exception being Eliza Fenwick's Secresy Caroline's letters make her a central subjectivity, and yet neither she nor readers -

118

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are led to imagine that Murden can or will ever love anyone but Sibella. In contrast, the author of Anna Melvil encourages readers to imagine that Emma may live happily with Desmond after all. When Desmond, who believes Anna is forever lost to him, proposes to Emma, she is almost beside herself with happiness: 'Emma from only a few days acquaintance, had advanced an age in love. She thought herself the most fortunate of women, and her heart was the seat of content and j oy' (1: 170). Desmond, well aware of Emma's virtues and beauty, is reconciling himself to his fate, when he visits her Millenium Hall and glimpses Anna. Enraptured, they gaze at each other, and Anna faints in Desmond's arms - at which point Emma discovers them. If the discovery that Desmond is Emma's and Anna's beloved shocks all three, the author focuses on Emma's effort to re-evaluate a situation that she now realizes she has misread. Both Anna and Emma heroically refuse to marry Desmond, each offering him to the other. Emma insists, however, that Anna accept her lover, volunteering to supply the foundling with a large fortune to smooth matters with Desmond's father. Anna refuses Emma's sacrifice, running off to a neighbouring cottage, at which point Anna's wealthy, noble father serendipitously appears. A victim of lost love, he has returned from his continental wanderings to reinstate his daughter to her rights. He is too late, as Anna has just died of consumption. Desmond dies shortly after, in his lover's arms. Emma fulfils Desmond's last request - to be buried with Anna beneath a willow tree. Following the sentimental heroine's credo she does not marry but continues to run her 'Millenium Hall'. About halfway through the novel, Desmond's father, Sir Marmaduke, blames novels for women's idealized notions of love: 'Tis your reading, your sentimental girls, who make confusion in families, they take upon them to have a will of their own, and are too wise, forsooth, to be happy in a COillIlo l n way . . . your accom­ plished women as they think themselves, must have a thousand imaginary perfections in her hero, and after all, where is their supe­ rior felicity when they are married? What husband sits down to be entertained with his wife's conversation, the novelty of mind as well as body soon wears off. (1: 163-4) 119

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As a discerning feminist author, Wollstonecraft draws a similar if less misogynistic conclusion in Rights if Woman ('Were women more rationally educated . . . they would be contented to love but once in their lives; and after marriage calmly let passion subside into friendship'''), but the author of Anna Melvil disagrees. Emma is likened to the exemplary benefactress of Scott's Millenium Hall , and thus elevated above the average heroine. However, she shares a similar sensibility and impressionability as more generic heroines, something that Desmond cannot see and that the author makes a point of noting: ' I believe her heart was not formed to feel with violence a warmer passion. So endeavoured to think Lord Desmond, but ah! How fatally for Mrs Roscommon's peace was he mistaken' (2: 165). The author of Anna Me/vii ensures that readers never misread Emma, and yet by invoking competing subgenres (provi­ dential and sentimental) the author leaves the novel's fated conclusion an open question until the very end, creating the potential for surprise in the expected script. Misreading, in Anna Melvil, illuminates the expectations that conventions raise in intended readers, but without denigrating or instructing such readers. Having seen that Minerva's early provi­ dential novels reaffirm the feminist subtext of Lane's earliest publications, let us turn to two examples that orient Minerva's network towards the commoner-to-nobleman and thus, as will be argued, to the Revolution debate itself It will be important to keep in mind that the commoner-to-nobleman formula reaffirms the social hierarchy while still advancing the gendered subjectivities of the eighteenth-century 'cultural revolution', Gary Kelly's term for the shift from aristocratic to middle-class manners and mores.23 Masculinity so redefined creates an opportunity for writers to contest counter-revolutionary logic.

4:3 New Orientations In Fille de Chambre (1792) Susanna Rowson deploys providential language but she also makes a point of establishing that her heroine, Rebecca Littleton, is no commoner-to-noblewoman: 'you must not expect to read of wonderful discoveries, of titles, rank, and wealth, 120

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being unexpectedly heaped upon her' (p. v). Instead, Rebecca is the daughter of a down-on-his-Iuck veteran. Early in the novel, Rebecca is taken in by a patron, Lady Mary, with whom she lives as a companion. Rebecca's grace and beauty c onflict in a11 the expected ways with her relatively low origins. Rebecca loves precisely whom she should not - but by the commoner-to-noble­ woman's logic, should - Lady Mary's son, Sir George Worthy. Even as Lady Mary prizes Rebecca's beauty and goodness, she nonetheless expects Sir George to marry her niece Eleanor, the daughter of the Earl of Chatterton. Mary asks Rebecca to swear never to listen to her son's advances. Rebecca takes the oath. When Sir George proposes marriage, she keeps her word: 'the humble Rebecca Littleton, however sensible of your merits, can never be your wife; insurmountable obstacles are placed between us' (p. 60). Providential language directs the reader to suspect noble origins (if, that is, Rowson had not so clearly stated in her preface that there will be no such disc overy) , e.g. Rebecca's refusal further convinces Sir George of her worth: 'How much does this woman's sentiments elevate her above the station in which Providence has placed her! ' (p. 58). Rebecca always feels precisely what she ought: ' I feel my inferiority, nay, feel it so powerfully, that I will never meanly creep into a family who would think themselves dishonoured by the alliance' (p. 33). Still, Rebecca secretly questions her destiny: 'He certainly loves me and is worthy of my esteem. Why are we not born for each other, for sure I am, I could be content with Sir George, though in the humblest station' (p. 84). Lady Mary regards Rebecca as her adoptive daughter and intends to make her independent, but she suddenly sickens and dies before having a chance to revise her will. Rebecca, now destitute, accepts a position as maid to Lady Mary's selfish daughter. The situation does not last long (Rebecca is dismissed upon discovery of the husband's designs on her). Rebecca becomes companion to another young woman - and then another - and another - and finally, once again, becomes a servant, but loses this job too. The author takes the opportunity for feminist critique: 'Alas! Poor Rebecca, she little knew how small a portion of the world's wealth fell to the share of the humble, the industrious female, who by continued labour can scarcely gain sufficient to supply, with the coarsest food, 121

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the wants of nature' (p. 181). In the course of her employment, Rebecca travels to America; there, she meets an old lieutenant who looks oddly familiar - he is no other than her father's brother, a man long believed dead. Rebecca and her uncle return together to England.24 In the providential novel, there is little extraneous information. Readers already know that Rebecca is not noble. The novel's great surprise comes near the end when Sir George discovers that he is not actually Lady Mary's son but a commoner's (more on his iden­ tity shortly). Rowson directs readers to this possibility just pages prior when introducing a new character, a handsome and noble­ minded foundling called Oakley. Sir George's intended, Eleanor, loves this young man, whom her father had brought up after he had been discovered at the foot of an oak tree on the Earl's property. This foundling is the real Sir George Worthy -and the former Sir George is now George Littleton and thus, coincidentally, Rebecca's uncle's son (when they were infants, Sir George had been replaced by George Littleton by well-intentioned nurses after the former was stolen by gypsies - Sir George had been left under the oak tree). Rebecca marries her lover while keeping her vow: she never encouraged Sir George Worthy. Sir George and Eleanor are the commoner-to-nobleman's rightful hero and heroine, but they are not Rowson's. Rowson's 1792 novel is a prime example of the kind of authorial agency enabled by formulas like the commoner-to­ nobleman. The providential novel generally affirms middle-class values, but by bequeathing them to the most noble-minded of the upper class, a c ompromise that echoes counter-revolutionary writers like Burke (such novels affirm the social order while suggesting that it will c ontinue to be sustainable only if the upper classes reform). By refusing to adhere to this compromise, Rowson contests the providential novel's open secret - that noble character is a sign of noble birth. By adhering to the language and conventions of providential logic, Rowson shows that both Rebecca and George were always right to feel as they did. Littleton's independent spirit and Rebecca's grace, goodness, modesty and hard work elevate them to the commoner-to-noble­ man and noblewoman's heights. 122

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The politics of providential novels are anything but subtle and in works like Fille de Chambre this lack of subtlety creates the sort of opportunity that Burke fears in Reflections. When Burke exposes seemingly innate feelings as habitual so as to defend long-standing British custom, he recognizes the risk: to expose how prejudice works creates space for alternative points of view, something that the author of my final example, Ellen Rushford (1794), appears to understand well. In this case, the author refers directly to contem­ porary events in France. As in Blenheim Lodge, an uncle (a Mr Fitz-Aubin) disowns his young and beautiful niece but, this time, with remorse - Fitz-Aubin has always loved Ellen, treating her as a daughter. A second marriage has left him deep in debt, and he fears Ellen's influence on his son, Henry, whom he hopes will restore the family fortune by marrying a neighbouring heiress, a woman he neither respects nor loves. Henry and Ellen are in love, and in his refusal to forsake her, Henry repurposes the fatalism of providential language for the self­ determination of the natural rights of man: Let us . . . exert our reason, and the unalienable right of free will, which is our birth right;- would my father's prejudices allow him to part with an encwnbered estate, there could remain no obstacle to our felicity; and is it prejudice then, rather than reason which must direct our destiny?25

In Rights of Men,Wollstonecraft takes Burke to task for advocating landed property as a guarantee of family affections and basic British liberties.26 The author ofEllen Rushford reiterates Wol1stonecraft's view. Henry charges his father with hypocrisy: Fitz-Aubin had married unwisely and now intends to sacrifice his son's happiness rather than to sell off part of the estate to pay his debts.When the author expands Henry's argument from the particular to the general, Henry's reason­ ing echoes revolutionary writers like Wollstonecraft and Paine: Aristocracy never has more than one child. The rest are begotten to be devoured. (paine)27

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Minerva and the Politics of Feeling Who can recount all the unnatural crimes which the laudable, inter­ esting desire of perpetuating a name has produced? The younger children have been sacrificed to the eldest son; sent into exile, or confined in convents, so that they might not encroach on what was called, with shameful falsehood, the family estate. (Wollstonecraft)28

I have ever considered the law of entail, as most unjust and oppres­ sive; 'tis the injuring of many, for the aggrandizement of a few; and more adapted to the age of feudal tyranny, than the interests of a free state. (Ellen Rushford 1: 73)

Henry makes no secret of the fact that on his father's death he intends to divide his inheritance among his siblings. If Henry is a firebrand, his beloved is a female exemplar. To save her uncle's family, Ellen marries Captain Faulkner, a middle-aged man whom she esteems but does not love. The author implies that she has made the correct choice. Ellen is reasonably happy in marriage, and Henry's oldest friend counsels him to follow Ellen's guide by replacing his selfish passion with the 'noble principle of social love' (1: 152).29 After Ellen's marriage, Henry travels to Switzerland. There, he befriends a Mr Henderson, who compares traditional British liber­ ties to the early stages of the Revolution in France: 'Taught from my cradle to value the blessings of a free constitution, I should be glad to see the condition of all mankind, as happy as that which Britons have for ages been blessed with' (2: 75). Revolutionary writers like Wollstonecraft and Paine battle over how to represent post-Terror events in France, as Stephen Blakemore illustrates. 30 Whereas Wollstonecraft represents the Terror as a sign that French society had not yet reached a state of perfection, Paine omits details that portray the Revolution in a poor light. Henderson echoes Wollstonecraft's point of view: From the beginning of the sixteenth century; a beam of renovated light has gradually di:ffused itself, over the mental darkness ofEurope.­ The French are the first to demonstrate its happy effects, therefore 124

Providential Adaptations, 1 790-1794 I call the principle of their revolution, a glorious proof of the regen­ eration of their character, whilst those tragical consequences, which I and every man of feeling deplore, ought to be considered as the effect of their fonner depravity, and demonstrate that rekindling principle of virtue is not yet generally restored. (2: 81)

By 1794, the British government was suspending previously guar­ anteed liberties like habeas corpus in an effort to prevent insurrection. At this critical moment, the author of Ellen Rushford invokes the commoner-to-noblewoman formula to illuminate its socio-cultural limits as a vehicle for contribution to the Revolution debate. Though Ellen is not a commoner-to-noblewoman proper, the author recalls this formula at the novel's end. When in France, Henry discovers that Henderson is Ellen's birthfather (he had long been presumed dead) . Providentially, Ellen's husband dies, leaving her free to marry Henry. With a measure of poetic justice, while Henry's father fully approves of his wealthy bride, he ' [does] not live long to enj oy the sincere satisfaction which that event afforded him' (2: 138).31 Even when Minerva novelists echo the writers who rebut Burke, their freshest contribution to the Revolution debate happens through their adaptation of popular formula. As a female exemplar, Ellen was not free to contest providential logic. The author supplies Henry in her place. Henry - rich, male and well-educated ­ is free to travel abroad, where his entirely explicable draw to a man who thinks and feels much as he does, provides the missing clue that brings him back to the woman he has long loved. Ellen Rushford represents a turning point in the providential novel's history, a moment where an author draws on the wider network of providential novels to reorient that network to the commoner-to­ nobleman. As described above, the providential hero reflects eighteenth-century redefinitions of masculine virtue. By Minerva's zenith, novelists treat the commoner-to-nobleman's natural-born talent as particularly conducive for destabilizing counter­ revolutionary logic, as will be demonstrated in Chapter 7. The most incisive contributions to the Revolution debate happen at Minerva's zenith. As I have suggested, Minerva's early experiments with the providential novel lay the foundation for these contribu­ tions - not only by introducing new language and conventions, but 125

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also via meta-commentary on Minerva's larger network of novels. A 1792 Minerva publication, A Butler's Diary, makes a particularly good example. The titular butler, Mr Rule, dies halfWay through the novel, at which point the author favourably contrasts Rule's plain speaking to Burke's rhetoric: Rule being dead is a circwnstance unfavourable at this present jllllction, when the assistance of the DIARY would have embellished our narrative, more from the plain intelligence it communicated, than all the flowers of rhetoric, though flowing in copious and soft nwnbers from the lips of a Burke . . . these serve to dazzle the hear­ ers, and recommend a bad cause; we will not foul or sully our own or our reader's ideas, with adding, perhaps, a bad intention: we need no such ornaments as these, but call for those pleaders, nature has bestowed in the sympathizing bosom of man, in those who can enter into the recesses of a parental breast, or the still nearer tye of connubial connexions.32

In the first half of the novel, Rule provides a careful account of the sentimental drama that unfolds in the household (a ward of the house, Miss Eggleton, had privately married one of her guardian's sons). The author now suggests that this story - the same kind of story that unfolds over Minerva's larger network - provides a more accurate account of nature than Burke. Burke's eloquence derives from a 'false cause', dangerous precisely because it is masked as natural feelings. In the early 1790s, the providential novel is not yet a stable form; rather, it is a hybrid of the older sentimental conventions and the newer providential logic. New situations create new demands on writers, of which they are often conscious. This is true for Burke and Godwin as well as for Minerva novelists. In making Rule an author-figure, the author of A Butler's Diary contributes to the meta-conversation about circulating-library authorship described in Chapter 1. As we saw, when Minerva novelists discuss their output or authorship, they create the terms and c onditions for a collective rather than merely derivative model for circulating­ library authorship. This chapter has shown that Minerva novelists are already acclimatized to sentimental conventions and thus to 126

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feeling as a source of knowledge. As novelists use providential language, they seem aware that the sentimental 'I' and the provi­ dential 'we' represent different sides of the French Revolution debate. Counter-revolutionary novelists win the generic battle waged against the sentimental novel, as Nicola Watson shows.33 If this chapter has illustrated that Minerva's providential novels reflect the themes and sentiments of actively counter-revolutionary novels, we have also seen that providential clues prime novelists to treat Minerva's larger network as a shared social text that is subject to revision. When novelists recognize that authorial innovation is both restricted and enabled by popular conventions, they voice what is arguably a new structure of feeling about authorship. In owing their debt to borrowed material, Minerva novelists strike a middle balance between Romantic projections of authorship as original expression or formulaic reproduction. Next, I show that Godwin learns from these novelists when he writes what I characterize as an 'anti-providential' novel.

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5

Godwin and Providenti al Feeling In Things As They Are: Meeting Readers Where They Are

In Political Justice, Godwin clearly regards his own day as ripe with possibility. Believing that men and women will better themselves, he places great faith in print culture. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, Godwin believes that the dissemination of literature (that is, in the broad eighteenth-century sense) encourages discussion and debate.! Insisting that a true revolution will take root slowly and organically by reasoned choice, Godwin still presumes an intellectual elite that introduces new ideas to readers, many ofwhom will awaken to the truth and take on the mantle of author themselves .' Just one year later, in the forbidding political climate of 1794, Godwin evidently felt that this natural evolution was in need of a push 3 While Godwin engages directly with his peers in Political Justice, in Things As They Are he tailors his arguments to the rapidly expanding novel-reading market. Godwin repeatedly revised his novel for later editions, though his most substantial revisions were for the second (1796) and third (1797). For the most part, Godwin added to, rather than altered, the original text so as to 'sharpen or clarifY the motives ofvarious characters at key moments in the text', as Gary Handwerk and A. A. Markley explain in their introduction to Godwin's fifth and final edition (1831), the last to be published in his lifetime ' I use the 1794 text to maintain focus on Godwin's intended readers at that particular moment. Additionally, an occasional reference to the 1797 edition will serve to highlight Godwin's evolving ideas about the politics of revolutionary authorship at Minerva's zenith.

Godwin and Providential Feeling

Godwin's object, established by his 1794 preface, is to illustrate a point already known to philosophers: 'the spirit and character of the government intrudes itselfinto every rank of society.'s Godwin reveals this object primarily through Caleb 's relationship with the country squire, Mr Falkland, who employs the young rustic as his secretary. Known for the 'benevolence of his actions' and his 'principles of inflexible integrity' , Mr Falkland is 'a being of a superior order' to his domestics 6 Yet after Falkland admits to Caleb that years prior he had murdered a neighbouring squire and allowed two other men to hang for the crime, he assumes an all-encompassing power over Caleb and eventually has him jailed on a false charge of robbery. Even after Caleb escapes, Falkland continually thwarts his efforts to create a new life for himself, leaving the young man futureless and entirely alienated. Written in the first person, ostensibly as Caleb's memoir, Things As They Are is intense and action-filled, but much of the novel's intensity derives from Godwin's emphasis on Caleb's state of mind, first as he becomes obsessed with Falkland's secret, and later, as Falkland's surveillance drives him into paranoia. Critics have taken keen interest in what happens when Godwin shifts from the philosophical treatise to the novel. For example, as Pamela Clemit observes: On its most superficial level, the plot of Things As They Are offers a symbolic enactment of relations between government and the governed as set out in Political Justice . . . But this reading does not account for the boldness of Godwin's imaginative design, in which he remoulds the eighteenth-century romance plot into a subjective nightmare of flight and pursuit.7

Others connect Godwin's novel to Romantic poetics, finding Political Justice more a product of its own day. This tendency to represent Things As They Are as forward-looking elides the question ofwhy Godwin attempted a novel at all in the mid-1790s (Godwin's last venture with the novel market had been in 1784 when he had published three novels, one of them, Imogene, with Lane). Even critics like Clemit who try to determine how Godwin creates what he thinks will be a palatable reading experience can account for 129

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only small portions of the novel, e.g. suggesting that Godwin borrows strategies from Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts (characters like Thomas, a farmer's son who speaks plainly, create opportunities to insert political points worded 'to appeal to the common sense of working class men'S). True, Godwin's intended readers , at least as he perceives them in 1794, do not have the time or training to read philosophy, but his choice of genre is the novel, not the chapbook or tract. To reach his intended readers, Godwin supplies them with the same providential conventions that drive the novel market. As we have seen, period novels rely on a constellation of words and phrases that point to an all-seeing eye - Providence, destiny, fate: 'no crime goes undetected.' In Things As They Are, Godwin treats providential language and conventions as a subtext on which readers unreflectively draw. This subtext constitutes the largely tacit rules that enable a hierarchical society to run smoothly and as such operates as a text in its own right. Godwin works to alienate readers from providential conventions so as to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Early in the novel Caleb's worldview is providential (e.g. innocence is always visible to others; virtue is always victorious over vice). By the end, Caleb has learned that human actors perpetuate social inequities by and through conventional habits of mind and feelings and that he too shares. Just three years later, in an unpublished 1797 essay 'Of History and Romance', Godwin would identify the romance as a perfect vehicle for the history's 'nobler' though long-forgotten purpose: to invoke powerful feelings in readers.9 Godwin contrasts two reading audiences: women and boys, who c onsume large quantities of romances and novels, and gentlemen and scholars, who do not. Godwin asserts that the romance should not be dismissed out of hand simply because so many people write them (and often poorly). Godwin makes no further remarks on the novel market, yet he appropriates romances for adult male readers by comparing them to the ancient histories of Greece and Rome, which 'treat the development of great genius, or the exhibition of bold and mascu­ line virtues' .10We find an early version of this representation of the romance in Things As They Are. Aside from a tangential plotline, Godwin bypasses romantic love, a staple feature of most popular 130

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novels. Godwin, like Wollstonecraft in Wrongs, uses popular conven­ tions to destabilize a frequently reproduced fantasy, in his case the providential fiction literalized by period novels. For her part, Wollstonecraft's concerns about women's subject formation leave her especially critical of most novels , and she more than Godwin appears to have felt it necessary to distance her work from popular novels and their readers. If, as described in Section One, Wollstonecraft constrains her imagination in Wrongs and represents her'genius' as subject to her socio-political project, Godwin gives no indication that he is similarly constrained. While in 1797 Godwin identifies the romance with sublimity and futurity, his own 1794 romance suggests that he does not differentiate between the visionary work of genius and the more prosaic work of the activist author. In Things As They Are, new associations - and thus, potential for change - are sparked by the very conventional feelings that uphold a providential worldview. " This discussion looks ahead to the way that Minerva's authorial model helps to instigate Wordsworth's Romantic anxiety. Godwin's self-representation in Political Justice is shown to be analogous to Wordsworth's in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Whereas Wordsworth elevates poets above popular conventions, Godwin learns something from them when tailoring his political philosophy to a novel-reading audience. In Things As They Are, collective feeling - which over most of the novel is a sign of prejudice and injustice- becomes a potentially reconciliatory force, and in the novel's final scene, it underwrites Caleb's eloquence, or his capacity to move his otherwise implacable audience. We would be hard pressed to say that Godwin was conscious of his debt to Minerva's authorial mode1.We can say, however, that he is well aware that period readers find pleasure in their novels, and that their pleasure is largely constituted by subtle variations on the expected conventions. To exploit this potential for pleasure, Godwin works closely with providential conventions, gaining perspective on how they operate in use, as a heuristic for powerful because shared feelings and habits of mind. Like other critics, I analyse the tension between Godwin's two conclusions to the novel: the original manuscript, which he never published (and of which scholars were unaware until 196612), and Godwin's published version. In both versions, Caleb returns to the 131

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town where he was accused of theft and officially charges Falkland with murder in front of a magistrate and several gentlemen witnesses. In the original, Caleb persists in the belief he has held throughout the novel: ifhe speaks firmly in front of the correct audience, he will be heard. Caleb is wrong. Falkland is the victor and Caleb, imprisoned once again, goes mad. In the revision, Caleb is anguished when he sees the corpse-like Falkland. To his own surprise, he speaks eloquently about Falkland's virtues and impugns himselffor disclosing his bene­ factor's story Falkland throws himself into Caleb's arms, declaring him the victor, but Caleb feels more defeated then ever, and his concluding words are bleak: 'what use are talents and sentiments in the corrupt wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil, from which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows' (3: 302). While critics have long debated the merits of both versions of the conclusion,Tilottama Rajan's influential reading finds Godwin's revision exemplifYing an alternative Romanticism to Wordsworth's. Godwin, like Wordsworth, displaces his authority onto an ideal reader, but Godwin 'frees the reader from an auxiliary role, and makes history the site of difference rather than an atemporal vindi­ cation ofauthorial identity'. 13 Rajan suggests that Godwin envisages a dynamic exchange between himself and a 'prophetic' reader, who will share similar principles with Godwin himself The 'prophetic' reader picks up on a 'tendency' in the novel of which Godwin himself may not be fully aware. 14 This prophetic reader has different implications when reoriented to Godwin's projected readers. In the revised conclusion, convention creates the opportunity for the author's expression of not simply his own thoughts and feelings but also those of a larger public.

5:1 From Fate to Necessity Godwin's repeated use of words like 'destiny' ,'fate ' , and 'prophetic' creates the effect of what critics often describe as a psychological novel - and even an account of one man's persecution complex, e.g. 'it was a million of men in arms against me' (3: 370).15 But if the experience of Godwin's novel suggests paranoia for post­ Freudian readers, Godwin resolves any question of whether or not 132

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Caleb's experience of persecution is real or delusional. Falkland's henchman Giles circulates the torrid 'history of Caleb Williams', a broadsheet that represents Caleb as a hardened robber and promises a £100 reward for his capture. Caleb's name is known everywhere, and he finds that wherever his identity is discovered, he becomes abhorrent to noble-minded characters and a proverbial pot of gold for ignoble ones. In Political Justice, Godwin represents what we experience as freedom as a predictable and thus 'necessary' choice, based on our previous experiences and habits of mind. Godwin treats the mind as passive, by which he means that there is no originating force or self that is separate from or transcendent of its operations: He who afiinns that all actions are necessary; means, that, if we fonn a just and complete view of all the circwnstances in which a living or intelligent being is placed, we shall find that he could not in any moment of his existence have acted otherwise than he has acted. According to this assertion there is in the transactions of mind nothing loose, precarious and uncertain.16

'Necessity' is analogous to fate, with one crucial difference. Whereas 'fate' suggests that our lives are fixed from birth, necessity can be altered and is only revelatory in retrospect. As individuals, we may be introduced to someone or something that will change our individual course. Moreover, humans as a species can alter their destiny, becoming a more perfect race. If people are educated to be rational and virtuous, they will respond with compassion and justice and put the greater good ahead of themselves. Godwin defines virtue by intention, not action. And yet he also contends that as we become more virtuous, we act in ways that feel and seem sponta­ neous. Our virtuous intent becomes natural, a part of who we are. Wordsworth works with a similar idea in 1800 when discussing how the Poet constructs poetic habits of mind: Poems to which any value can be attached, were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man, who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our 133

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling thoughts, which are indeed the representatives and, as by contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other we discover what is really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings wil l be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be originally possessed of much sensibility; such habits of mind wil l be produced, that, by obeying blindly and mechanical ly the impulses of those habits, we shal l describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature and in such connection with each other, that the understanding of the being to whom we address ourselves, if he be in a healthful state of association, must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections ameliorated.17

Both Godwin and Wordsworth aim to show how exemplary indi­ viduals train their minds in such a way that help them further the greater good, whether via philosophy or poetry. Wordsworth's 1802 revisions to the Preface, and in particular, his lofty portrait of the Poet-figure, are often read as a break from a mimetic to an expressive theory of art,!8 but he does not excise passages that detail the poet's careful construction of his poetic habits. Wordsworth wants readers to see that 'spontaneity' is actually the effect of carefully cultivated habits of mind.!9 When Wordsworth presents the poet's mind as self-disciplined and as uniquely qualified for creating lasting verse, he authorizes himself and his verse against a prolific print culture and accompanying images like the self-reproducing novel and the reader-turned-writer. Like the novel reader, Wordsworth experi­ ences his feelings as spontaneity; like her, he 'mechanically' obeys his feelings. The difference is that in his case, obedience to habit is based in mental activity, a process that has led him to new associ­ ations of thought, and thereby to a more genuine sensibility (what James Chandler calls Wordsworth's 'second nature '20). By both the claim of nature ('organic' sensibility) and effort, Wordsworth elevates himself, the poet, above most other men. In the 1802 edition, Wordsworth boldly defines the Poet as a 'man speaking to men', only to follow with an extravagant list of all of the ways he is unlike other men.21 Several passages later, Wordsworth's Poet is in his most exalted form. Godlike, cosmic, he connects and unites, transcending himself and his time: 134

Godwin and Providential Feeling [the Poet] is the rock of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying every where with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth and over all time.22

Before this ecstatic description of the Poet, Wordsworth deploys the same rhetorical strategy - and some of the same language from his more famous passage on spontaneity. As he does in 1800, Wordsworth makes a bold statement to qualifY it: However exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the charac­ ter of a Poet, it is obvious, that whilst he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffer­ ing. So that it will be the wish of the Poet to bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes, nay; for short spaces of time, perhaps, to let himself slip into an entire delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with theirs; modifYing only the language which is thus suggested to him, by a consideration that he describes for a particular purpose, that of giving pleasure.23

As in 1800,Wordsworth sets up a problem for his readers. How can the Poet do more than merely 'describe and imitate' passions? His solution - to attend to his composing process - shows his debt to critical discourse about female readers. In preparing to write, the Poet intends to lose himself in his text (which, in his case, is his environment). Like the novel reader, he is momentarily deluded, and like her, he reads another's experience as his own. Yet because the Poet's habits of mind are fresh, unbroken by a chain of cliched associations, he does more than imitate. He moves outside himself and in so doing becomes more himself, bringing mindfulness to delusion and pleasure to his readers. In the critical imagination, susceptible female readers swept away by their novels were presumed to collapse their identities with the heroine's, what Sonia Hofkosh calls 'circulating library sensibility'." 135

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As it was imagined, this sensibility did not widen a reader's emotional horizons; rather, it led her back into herself, into a world of cliche and probably the production of more novels. By imagining himself 'in the like situation' of those whom he writes about,Wordsworth reclaims sensibility from the circulating-library manufactory. Emphasizing its potential as a moral force, he renders sensibility as an active power that the poet harnesses for the greater good. Once readers are roused by poems that forgo 'gross and violent' stimulants for a worthy, human purpose, they will be roused to generosity, compassion and empathy for the marginalized and forgotten. More than simply reacting to critical discourse about novels and their readers, Wordsworth draws from this discourse to theorize a new model for literary invention (though without acknowledging the debt). I now show that without the revised conclusion, Godwin's position on the popular novel market does not fundamentally differ from Wordsworth's. Like Wordsworth, Godwin indicates that popu­ lar conventions put a stranglehold on what can be thought and felt, though not for the discerning author.

5:2 The Politics of Writing an Anti-providential Novel Caleb, a young man of humble origins whose talents attract the attention of the benevolent Falkland, is a variation on the commoner­ to-nobleman hero:'I was born of humble parents in a remote county of England' (1: 2). When Falkland offers Caleb a position shortly after his father's death, Godwin sets the stage for yet another excep­ tional orphan to discern his noble origins:'I formed golden visions of the station I was about to occupy' (1: 7). If, as in the providential novel, Caleb's exceptionality precipitates a dramatic plot, his straight­ forward representation of himself and his origins circumvents providential logic. His parents really were peasants, and by assuring readers that Caleb does not have a secret past, Godwin shifts the energy of his narrative to Falkland's. Caleb transcribes Falkland's history (as told by Falkland's steward, Collins) in the first volume. Before Falkland's arrival, Mr Tyrrel had his pick of the ladies and was admired and feared by the men. Falkland's generosity, intellect and grace make him the new favourite, sparking Tyrrel's envy 136

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and eventually his rage after Falkland interferes in Tyrrel's 'personal' affairs: his malicious treatment of both his tenant and his niece. Tyrrel is murdered the very night that he gives Falkland a thrashing at their club, and though Falkland is suspected of the crime, he is acquitted by his peers in a private hearing. This stain on Falkland's honour haunts him but fires Caleb's curiosity. Caleb torments Falkland with his questions, ultimately provoking him to confess to Caleb that he is Tyrrel's murderer. The novel, supposedly Caleb's memoir, immediately calls readers to a task: to read his story and do justice to his name. By representing Caleb as an authorial 'I', Godwin repurposes the seemingly unme­ diated and in-the-moment experience of the epistolary exchange for the hindsight of reflection. It is all the more telling, then, that Caleb makes a point of explaining that despite his reasoning capacity, he precipitates his fate by acting upon his feelings. For example, after painstakingly analysing Falkland's story, Caleb discerns the truth: ' [Falkland] is the murderer; the Hawkinses were innocent! I am sure of it! I will pledge my life for it!' (2: 69).At first electrified by his discovery, he reasons himself back into impartiality: 'My blood boiled within me. I was conscious to a kind of rapture for which I could not accOlmt. I was solemn, yet full of rapid emotion, burning with indignation and energy' (2: 69-70).

This state of mental elevation continued for several hours, but at length subsided, and gave place to more deliberate reflection. One of the first questions that then occurred to me was, What shall I do with the knowledge I have been so eager to acquire? I had no in­ clination to turn informer . . . I conceived it to be in the highest degree absurd and iniquitous to cut off a man qualified for the most essential and extensive utility, merely out of retrospect to an act which, whatever were its merits, could not be retrieved. (2: 70-1)

Caleb's views on crime and punishment echo Godwin's in Political justice: 'If the only criterion ofjustice be general utility, the inevitable consequence is that, the more we have ofjustice, the more we shall 137

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have of truth, virtue and happiness.''' Still, Caleb's impulsiveness gets the better of him: But all this reasoning produced no alteration in my way of thinking. For this time I could not get it out of my mind for a moment: 'Mr Falkland is the murderer! He is guilty! I see it! I feel it! I am sure of it!' Thus was I hurried along by an uncontrollable destiny.

(2: 72) In the providential novel, coincidence is never just that - it reflects a higher power. Godwin plays with this convention, showing how the coincidence of a household fire sets Caleb's 'fate' into motion. With the household servants running this way and that, Caleb seizes the opportunity to pry open Falkland's mysterious chest, which he presumes contains a confession ofTyrrel's murder. In recalling this fateful scene, Caleb describes himself as in a state of excitement so intense that it is as if he has been seized by something outside himself, an image Godwin cultivates by mobilizing providential language: 'My steps, by some mysterious fatality, were directed to the private apartment at the end of the library' (2: 75). Had Caleb's feelings not impeded his impartiality, there would be no fatalistic tale of persecution, my point being that Godwin is writing to 'providential' readers, most of whom he anticipates will not yet be prepared to accept the idea of'necessity'. Godwin plants a seed that he hopes will take root in volume 2, once Falkland accuses his servant of robbery. When Caleb flees Falkland's estate, he intends never to return, but a note from Falkland's half-brother, Forrester, c onvinces him otherwise: ' If your conscience tells you, "You are innocent," you will, out of all doubt, come back' (2: 153). Caleb also possesses providential habits of mind. As he later insists at the informal hearing at which Forrester presides as magistrate, 'I will never believe that a man conscious of innocence, cannot make other men perceive that he has that thought' (2: 186-7). By repurposing c onventions about guilt and innocence, Godwin positions his intended readers to see British society as Caleb does: first, as aligned with the providential worldview; but later, as c orrupt and hypocritical. 138

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At the hearing, Caleb is 'amazed' and 'horrified' by the squire's lies: 'In reality I was, of all the spectators, that individual who was most at a loss to conceive . . . what would come next' (2: 178). He attempts to declare his innocence without betraying Falkland's secret, and his initial defence, eloquent in its simplicity, sways his viewers: ' I am innocent . . . I appeal to my heart - I appeal to my looks - I appeal to every sentiment my tongue ever uttered' (2: 179). When Caleb 's audience glances towards the property he has allegedly stolen, their expressions change; seeing this, Caleb makes his first mistake. He assaults their feelings by declaring that Falkland knows that he is innocent: at this, an 'involuntary cry of indignation burst from every person in the room' (2: 179-80). From Forrester to the household servants, witnesses to the scene move as if one body. From sympathetic response when Caleb appeals to his youth and countenance, to sceptical glance back to the stolen property, to involuntary cries of anger, they cannot assimilate Caleb's accusation with either their knowledge of the squire's character or with Caleb's subordinate position in the household. Because of Caleb's inability to grasp the social conventions of the courtroom, Forrester is forced to articulate them for him: 'Defend yourself as well as you can, but do not attack your master. It is your business to create in those who hear you a prepossession in your favour. But the recrimination you have now been practising will always create indignation' (2: 189-90). Caleb continues to ignore his audience's disbeliefand outrage, insisting with increased firmness on both his innocence and on Falkland's lies. The group draws the same conclu­ sion: Caleb is no ordinary criminal; rather, having turned against his benevolent master, he is a monster. Caleb cannot see that he has misread his audience from the start. He believes himself eloquent because he speaks the simple truth and does not see that his eloquence derives from a worldview where the signs of guilt and innocence are as plain as day. Throughout the novel, this worldview is echoed back at Caleb, but to show that providential logic is flexible, adjusting to a prejudiced point ofview, e.g. the humble Thomas, on visiting Caleb in gaol, says: 'For your sake, lad, I will never take any body's word, nor trust to appearances, tho' it should be an angel. Lord bless us! How smoothly you palavered it over, for all the world, as if you had been as fair as a 139

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new-born babe!' (2: 200-1) . Over the course of the novel, Caleb learns a great deal about injustice. When, in the penultimate scene, Caleb once again summons providential language, it stands as the perfect metaphor for the injustice and persecution he has suffered as a free British subject. Falkland has exercised such power over him that Caleb, reduced to constant flight and disguise, feels just as he imagines a true sinner would under the eye of God: It was like what has been described of the eye of Omniscience, pursuing the guilty sinner, and darting a ray that awakens him to new sensibility, at the very moment that, otherwise, exhausted nature would lull him into a temporary oblivion of the reproaches of his conscience. (3: 248-9)

As things are, 'justice ' is a mockery. Man, not God, has created providential signs. Rather than yield to Falkland's seeming ' omnip­ otence', Caleb decides to take his fate into his own hands, regardless of the consequences (3: 271). As noted above, Godwin's original and revised conclusions begin the same way. When Caleb meets Falkland before the magistrate and several other gentlemen witnesses, he is awestruck and horrified by the squire's appearance. Whereas on their previous meeting, Falkland had appeared almost demonic with rage, he is now colourless and emaciated. In the original version, Caleb represents his emotion as something almost outside himself Indeed, he appears much as he had early in the novel when prying open Falkland's secret chest, 'frenzied' and illogical. Caleb, however, recovers his 'self-possession', and says precisely what he had intended to say. In the revision, Caleb experiences his emotion as coming from within, as an episteme that reshapes how he sees his situation and himself The original reads: I collected myself for the awful minute that was now before me; and the sense of its inestimable importance seemed to put to instant flight the tumult of passions that had till then possessed me. In a moment I recovered from a state little short of frenzy, and found myself perfectly self-possessed. My mind reviewed with ease the successive parts of the transaction I had to explain. I was varied, perspicuous and forcible.26 140

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The revision is: My whole frame shook. I would eagerly have consented that that moment should have been the last of my existence. I however believed, that the conduct now most indispensably incumbent on me was to lay the emotions of my soul naked before my hearers. I looked first at Iv1r Falkland, and then at the magistrate and attendants, and then at Mr Falkland again. My voice was suffocated with agony. (3: 286-7)

In the revision, Caleb finally finds the receptive audience he had always envisaged. He possesses the full sympathy of his auditors, including Falkland, who throws himself in his arms: My heart was pierced, and I was compelled to give vent to its anguish. Every one that heard me, was petrified with astonishment. Every one that heard me, was melted into tears. They could not resist the ardour with which I praised the great qualities of Falkland; they manifested their sympathy in the tokens of their penitence. (3: 296-7)

As Gary Kelly persuasively reasons, Godwin's revision accommo­ dates an increasingly counter-revolutionary climate. Rather than the incendiary ending he originally intended, Godwin advocates recon­ ciliation.27 Critics disagree, however, whether Godwin fully intended what many read as Caleb's self-abnegation. As Gary Handwerk puts it, Caleb identifies with Falkland to such a degree that Falkland, not Caleb, becomes the final 'I' of the narrative, an effect that he suspects Godwin probably did not intend." As evidence, Handwerk takes seriously his own affective response to that conclusion (disgust at Caleb's self-abasement), recalling Rajan's point that Godwin presumes there to be a prophetic reader who will uncover the 'genuine tendency' of the text, and that this reader will be someone whose principles coincide with those of Godwin himself. If Handwerk's Caleb is ultimately no more than a servant of upper­ class interests,Yasmin Solomnescu's is a successful orator: ' Caleb's trial for theft . . . reveals the importance of the plausible tale as defined by Cicero; consistent not with things as they are, but with 141

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things as the audience believes them to be.'29 The rhetor speaks with deliberation so as to draw a prejudiced audience closer to his point of view. Solomnescu raises the important point that Caleb is finally heard once he meets his audience where they are (admirers of Falkland and beneficiaries of a hierarchal social order) but perhaps overstates Caleb's intent as an orator. Caleb's lack of intent, his surprise at what he finds himself actually saying, makes him quite unlike Cicero's ideal speaker. Godwin's belief in ' necessity', or the idea that our ideas and actions follow a predetermined path, is a constituent component of the Jacobin aesthetic project, as is the related argument that character is formed by education, comprehensively defined. The Jacobin novel is 'unified' in its design, as Kelly describes. A char­ acter's behaviour and motives should not mystify but, rather, should be predicated on the events of the novepo Caleb does not write much about his own past, as Handwerk rightly notes (especially when contrasted to what Godwin reveals of Falkland's) , leaving Caleb's sudden and extreme identification with Falkland unex­ plained. 31 At the same time, we should note that Godwin supplies integral information about Caleb's character to his intended readers early in the novel. Like the providential hero, Caleb's character elevates him above his humble origins. Godwin reserves his most explicit invocation of the commoner-to-nobleman formula for the penultimate chapter. Caleb describes a chance encounter with Falkland's steward, Collins, who readers suddenly learn has been a father-figure to Caleb: "'My father," exclaimed I, embracing one of his knees with fervour and delight. " I am your son; once your little Caleb, whom you a thousand times loaded with your kindness'" (3: 255). Collins responds: "'My observation of your early character taught me that you would be extraordinary'" (3: 257). In providential novels , the hero's extraordinariness is revelatory. That even Caleb 's foster-father presumes him guilty breaks the central tenet of providential logic, the feelings that guide noble­ minded characters to truth and thus justice. And yet, Godwin redefines the 'revelatory' when making a point that Caleb himself grapples with early in the novel. 'Revelations' like Caleb's, even if true, may not actuate a greater good. Says Collins: 142

Godwin and Providential Feeling If you could change all my ideas, and show me that there was no criterion by which vice might be prevented from being mistaken for virtue, what benefit would arise from that? I must part with all my interior consolation, and all my external connections. And for what? What is it you propose? The death ofIv1r Falkland by the hands of the hangmen? (3: 258)

Despite Caleb 's love for Collins, he disagrees with his logic and decides to 'proceed resolutely to the investigation of the truth' (3: 261).We have seen Caleb in this mode before. When Caleb surmises the truth about Falkland's past, his yearning for absolute proof precipitates his fate. In the manuscript conclusion, Caleb once again stands outside the logic of his social text, elevated above the prej­ udices and thus feelings of his compatriots. They can only interpret his actions as monstrous. In the published version, Caleb is both a victim and perpetrator of injustice. In impugning himself and in venerating Falkland, he articulates what his audience feels, moving those gentlemen by his eloquence, which to an important degree verbalizes what they themselves feel. In Political Justice, 'necessity' is as predictable as an equation. Individuals may be surprised by what they think or feel, but the thoughts or feelings themselves are entirely predictable and can be easily retraced, much like a syllogism. In the published conclusion, Godwin introduces a note of unpredictability to necessity. Caleb is astonished by the way he thinks, feels and acts when face to face with Falkland. Caleb 's response is predictable, in retrospect, but the moment is dynamic, a figurative pause in the narrative where the impressionable Caleb undergoes a change of mind and senti­ ment. Caleb is finally able to create a 'plausible' tale because his audience's feelings resonate with his own. Surprise is central to the providential novel, even when it is only the full disclosure of what readers already essentially know. In Things As They Are, Caleb surprises himself, coming one necessary step closer to justice. When in Political Justice Godwin portrays print culture as a tiered system, he presumes that the discerning author stands above a shared social text. Although this author introduces ideas that only some readers will be ready to engage, these ideas filter downward until prejudices themselves become empty signifiers that the majority 143

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can now discard. In Things As They Are, a shared social text connects the author-figure of Caleb to his audience even as it enables Godwin to demonstrate more fully than in the original manuscript that 'the spirit and character of the government intrudes itself into every rank of society.'32 As a philosopher who avidly believes in human perfectibility, Godwin has learned something from providential conventions. Whereas in the original conclusion, Godwin focuses primarily on what he has to teach his intended readers, in the revision, convention stimulates the author-fIgure's expression of a larger public's thoughts, not just his own. Godwin further develops this stimulus in a third (1797) edition: in the opening pages of his memoir, Caleb now provides two important facts about his character. Along with being an orphan and of humble origins, Caleb is an avid reader of romances and adventures: 'I read, I devoured compositions of this sort. They took possession ofmy soul; and the effects they produced were frequently discernible in my external appearance and my health.''' Caleb's reading material has instilled in him a passionate belief in justice, as it is commonly defined: Virtue rising superior to every calamity; defeating by a plain unvar­ nished tale all the stratagems ofVice, and throwing back upon her adversary the confusion with which he had hoped to overwhehn her, was one of the favourite subjects of my youthful reveries.34

As we saw earlier, in 1794 Godwin is clear that Caleb's intense emotion impedes him from maintaining the insights he develops through careful reasoning. In 1797, these same passages now signal back to Caleb's quixotic reading habits: when surmising the truth about Falkland's past, Caleb enters a similar state of mind as when reading his beloved adventures. As a quixotic reader, he is also a feminine reader, and he accordingly writes himself into his own Gothic narrative. Indeed, Caleb hunched over a chest with a chisel, eagerly anticipating the secret manuscript within, closely resembles Austen's Catherine Morland as she fumbles with the lock on an old chest. Caleb never does find the expected manuscript (Falkland enters the room before Caleb can look inside the trunk) and while Catherine discovers hers, it is, to her chagrin, a washing bill. In 144

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both cases, the quixotic reader's overactive imagination creates the possibility for social critique. Catherine's illuminates the subtle horrors of ordinary life in a gendered, hierarchical society;35 Caleb's reveals just how blatant these horrors become when an otherwise exemplary steward of the common good is pushed beyond his limits of endurance. By Minerva's zenith, critics have revised common­ places about 'feminine' readers , as described in Chapter 1. The impressionable sponge-like reader has become an author, but only in the sense that she 'stamps' out yet another sensation-driven novel. Godwin's 1797 additions reflect this critical shift. The fateful conclusion now recalls Caleb's quixotic reading habits, which serve as a heuristic for his general impressionability. By showing that Caleb soaks up his audience's conventional feelings and that, stamp­ like, he reproduces them in his own writing, Godwin imbues his anti-providential narrative with a meta-narrative about the politics of revolutionary authorship in an age of prolific print. Rajan contends that Godwin's Jacobin novels become 'Romantic' when they cross 'the threshold between rhetoric and hermeneutics, making the reader more than simply the recipient of a text that is to be read for its moral'." As Rajan further speculates, Godwin envisages a dynamic interaction between author and reader in an as yet undefined future. Rajan's influential reading of Things As They Aye was itself'prophetic '.After all, most scholars now recognize Things As They Aye as a genuinely 'Romantic' text, a shift that signals the field's turn towards more expansive definitions of Romanticism. As Raj an, Handwerk and Solomnescu each suggest in their own way, Godwin's self-reflexive narrative challenges long-standing binaries such as apolitical/political, lyrical/rhetorical and author/ audience, to which we should add one more: prophetic/providential. Whereas the prophetic writer contests conventional points of view, the providential writer is subject to conventional habits of mind and thus, according to the first-generation Romantics featured in this study, susceptible to conventional feelings. Those providential writers who are also prophetic re-envisage the possible because of a loss of control, or what we might call ' obedience to feelings '. In Godwin's published conclusion, Caleb anticipates Wordsworth's Poet-figure, who 'for short spaces of time . . . [lets] himself slip into an entire delusion, and even confound[s] and identif[ies] his own 145

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

feelings' with others'.37 But whereas the Poet's feelings are the product of self-constructed habits of mind, Caleb's c onventional feelings disrupt his carefully reasoned point of view. Godwin is not an apologist for c onventional feeling, which, as he shows through the larger novel, often impedes justice. Rather, he demonstrates that in an imperfect world, revolutionary writers should remember that conventional feelings bind people together. The exemplary few disserve themselves and their readers by suggesting that they can transcend common feelings. In 'Of History and Romance', Godwin represents the romance writer as providing new models for human excellence. When Godwin claims sublimity and futurity for the romance, he may be reflecting back on what he learned from period novels when writing Things As They Are: in summoning conventional feelings, the impres­ sionable author can bring about new associations - and thus, potential for change, for both himself and his readers. At the same time, Godwin's novel also marks the difference between self­ representation and actual experience. Caleb's unbidden feelings shape how he perceives his situation, putting him on the same level with the readers Godwin hopes to instruct. By contrast, Godwin treats his anti-providential novel as one of a kind. Next, I show that by Minerva's zenith, its novelists too use providential conventions to summon feelings that they then revise.

146

6

Providential Feeling at Minerva's Zenith: Wh at the Commoner Teaches the Noblem an

The last two chapters have shown that Burke's Reflections, along with the ensuing pamphlet debate, engenders a critical moment in Romantic exchange. For a short time, Godwin comes close to entering a mutual exchange with Minerva's authorial model. Godwin learns something from popular c onventions even as he chauvinistically suggests that he introduces novel ideas to his projected readers. Chapter 6 illustrates that by Minerva's zenith period (approximately 1795-1802), the commoner-to-nobleman formula has become a powerful vehicle for challenging the Enlightenment c ommonplace that knowledge production begins with the elite few. Ifthere is no shortage of commoner-to-noble­ women at Minerva's zenith, the commoner-to-nobleman becomes the site for writers' challenge to deep-laid prejudices about the greater maj ority's capacity to think for themselves (female exem­ plarity, characterized by modesty and propriety, is not as conducive to this sort of challenge).With rare exception, novelists reaffirm providential 1ogic, showing the hero's talents to be innate, but the hero's persistent feelings that he deserves a 'destiny' greater than his apparent lot draws him dangerously near revolutionary thinking on the natural rights of man. Most writers close down this revolutionary potential, thus steering the novel back towards a Burkean point of view. Nonetheless, as I have suggested, Romantic exchange reveals more than an echo, or novelists' reiteration of expected points of view.

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

Novelists at Minerva's height of influence do not deny that they borrow conventions and language from the day's most influential literary and philosophical texts, but they demonstrate that popular conventions can be put to new use when taken up by the many. This discussion features three exemplary cases: Elizabeth Meeke's Count St. Blancard (1795), Frances Jacson's Disobedience (1797), and The Heir ofMontague (1798).lThese novels advance the Enlightenment ideal that print culture disseminates new ideas to the reading public. At the same time, they challenge this ideal by treating providential conventions as an opportunity for knowledge production. In each case, a commoner-to-nobleman's feelings unsettle hierarchical social relations. In my first example, an apothecary upstages a physician: educated in the shop, only the apothecary has the skills and train­ ing to save lives. In the second, a farmer's son becomes a proxy commoner-to-nobleman, with real nobility being relocated to industry and personal talent. In the third, the hero's two concep­ tual frames for imagining life as a labourer (a Rousseau-inspired version of wholesome rusticism and a dark, back-breaking version that culminates in the workhouse) are challenged by an actual ploughman who provides an alternative. While these novelists cultivate the commoner-to-nobleman formula's revolutionary potential to a greater degree than most Minerva novels at its zenith, they do not single their work out as an exception to the general formula. The challenge each novelist poses to the social order echoes the formula as is generally used by other novelists. In the early 1790s, the providential heroine is less likely to be represented as discomfited by her humble origins than at Minerva's zenith. There are multiple reasons for this: for instance, the novelist discloses the heroine's identity early in the novel; the heroine's adoptive parents inform her that she is surely noble; the heroine's adoptive parents are themselves noble and raise her accordingly. It is not until Minerva's zenith that novelists fully exploit the perceived distance between the heroine's providential credentials and her apparently humble origins - though, as noted above, their novels now often feature providential heroes. The adversity that the hero faces when a commoner, heightens drama but often also allows the hero (whose primary feature is that he possesses an innate superiority) to paradoxically become better 148

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than he would have been otherwise. Education, comprehensively defined, has a positive impact on his predetermined character - a point exemplified in even some of the most conservative-leaning of these novels, such as Anna Maria Bennett's The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors (1797), which doubly confirms providential logic. When a beggar woman and noblewoman's daughters are swapped at birth, both young women feel out ofplace. Rosa, the real noble­ woman, is rescued by a colonel and later finds a noble patron, who is (of course) her real mother, Lady Eleanor. When Lady Eleanor's false daughter discovers who and what she is, she casts herself at Rosa's feet: ' I do not ask you to forgive me - you know I am innocent, even my nature, ignorant as I was of fraud, is innocent I felt indeed I was an imposter.'2 While Rosa's elegance and noble mind are represented as innate, her earliest education, adversity, teaches her to 'rise superior to false shame' (1: 285-6). Rosa's expe­ riences also teach her to be a better reader of her surroundings, having experienced at first hand the callousness and hypocrisy of the elite. When still believing that she is the beggar-woman's daughter, Rosa stands up to a house full of her superiors to defend her character - and to critique theirs: Let me answer for myselfl I am the offipring of a beggar - an outcast:­ let the obloquy of my origin glare in every event of my existence; let me meet the contempt of little minds, and endure the hardships of that poverty which is my birthright, but no longer let me be loaded with guilt, from which my soul is free. Too long have my feelings been lacerated by the injustice of those who despise the beggary they want soul to relieve; too long has patient endurance, and the hope that travels with us through life, sanctioned the cahmlllY which pursues me. I have heard myself accused on prejudice and condemned on sunnise. (5: 135-6)

This remarkable speech 'spellbinds' Rosa's grandfather, the Duke. If Rosa's unusual beauty and strong character (and her credulity­ straining vocabulary) clues readers to her identity, Rosa's exemplary ideas and bravery signify who she has become - even as the 'false' Rosa naturalizes her inferiority by supposedly always having felt out of place. 149

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As the commoner-to-nobleman formula operates in use, many Minerva novelists are in step with Godwin who, in his 1796 revi­ sions to Political Justice, borrows from the providential novel: 'there is for the most part no essential difference between the child of the lord and the porter.'3 But it should be remembered that when Godwin takes stock of man as he is in 1790s Britain, he draws a similar conclusion to Burke, who portrays the servile person as habituated to act as an 'instrument' and not a 'control'.4 In 1793, Godwin argues that, 'Literature, and particularly that literature by which prejudice is superseded, and the mind is strung to a firmer tone, exists only as the portion of a few.'5 Godwin does not revise his thinking in 1796, and, if anything, harshens his tone when more fully taking emotional disposition into account. The 'majority' are 'parrots' who hardly know why they think as they do,6 an attitude that this chapter's featured novels disrupt. As illustrated below, each novel reveals a different method for entering the conversation. Meeke's novel most closely fits the prototypical Minerva model. Count St. Blancard is filled with anti-Jacobin language and conventions but does not read like a 'novel of purpose'. Jacson's novel provides a useful counterpoint, making Disobedience an obvious exception to Matthew Grenby's argument that Minerva's output is almost exclusively a watered­ down brand of anti-Jacobinism. My final example, The Heir of Montague (1798), gestures back much more explicitly than previous examples to the sentimental novel even while signposting what we now know to be the Romantic repurposing of sentimental conven­ tions into a new poetics, providing a case in point that Minerva's network continues to evolve both through novelists' exchanges with each other and from the material they inherit.

6:1 Meeke and the Politics of Prejudice There is no better example of the commoner-to-nobleman formula at its maturity than Meeke's Count St. Blancard 7 Dubois's suffering creates endless opportunities for drama while also providing the novelist with the opportunity to show that this hero is altered for the good by his 'common' upbringing. When Dubois is falsely 150

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accused of attempting to rob and seduce a marchioness's daughter, his judge (a high-ranking nobleman) is prejudiced against him from the start because of 'who and what he is': an apothecary's son. Dubois suffers a lengthy imprisonment and is condemned to die. Although Dubois's maltreatment under the law resembles Caleb's in Things As They Are, Meeke sets her novel in pre-revolutionary France, defusing its potentially revolutionary politics (French, not British, politics are portrayed as unjust). Count St. Blancard is a prime example of the distinction Grenby draws between actively anti­ Jacobin novels and merely ideological oness - that is, until we look to the way that Meeke builds her commoner-to-nobleman drama on rising tensions in the three-tiered medical profession. W J. Reader explains that over the course of the eighteenth century, physicians, who were educated as gentlemen, were progres­ sively threatened by the medical discoveries made by the lower-ranking surgeons and apothecaries, whose training was in the shop rather than at university. Apothecaries in particular posed a threat to physicians, as they too prescribed medicine and visited patients.9 Meeke draws directly from this controversy by represent­ ing Rhubarbin as so renowned that physicians regularly consult him. Rhubarbin's origins are humble, and he had initially been apprenticed in the shop he now owns.When the master apothecary died, Rhubarbin had married his widow, a shrewish woman much older than him. She died in childbirth, leaving him the shop, contingent on their son's survival. The child was sickly and on the day he dies, Rhubarbin serendipitously discovers a male infant on the shop's front stoop, his elegant dress and trinkets indicating noble birth. Rhubarbin quickly disguises him in his own son's clothes. Meeke lends more than customary detail to the adoptive parent's history, which is especially sordid: Rhubarbin marries to secure his career and appears to have no higher motives than professional ambition when lamenting his son's death or taking in the foundling. And yet, in the novel's narrative present, Rhubarbin dearly loves Dubois, a point that Meeke emphasizes throughout the novel. Meeke initially keeps readers in the dark as to Dubois's real identity, but her use of providential language makes his noble birth an open secret: e.g. Dubois periodically suffers 'moments when his ignoble birth occasioned him some disagreeable reflections', and at 151

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

these times 'he was sometimes almost tempted to murmur against that providence, which had placed him in so Iow a station.'lOWhen it is time for Dubois to choose a profession, filial tension ensues. Mr Rhubarbin wants Dubois to become a physician. When Dubois resists, having long dreamed of a military career, Rhubarbin insists that he is only looking out for his son's best interests: Now; my reputation as an apothecary, will be of infinite service to you in the line I intend you for, but can only hurt you as an officer, for were you to attain any high rank, it would be better for you had my name never been mentioned in the great world, which I flatter myself it often has, with esteem. (1: 17)

Dubois finally submits to his father and endeavours to 'c onquer' his feelings, which are characterized by a 'decided repugnance' for the medical profession (1: 18). This encounter between father and son is one of two occasions where Dubois's low origins most grate upon him. The second is when he falls in love with a noble­ woman, Miss Adelaide de Ceare. Superficially similar, these two scenes are diametrically opposed. Dubois's feelings for Adelaide enable him to act conventionally, all the while clueing readers to their future union. In contrast, his visceral distaste for the medical profession is a sign to readers that he takes the wrong path by following his father's guidance - this clue later proves to be a red herring. Meeke provides a detailed glimpse of Dubois's training on the job. Physicians often ask Rhubarbin for advice, and Dubois and his father discuss the 'absurdity' of many of their orders (1: 22). Dubois also accompanies his father on his frequent visits to the po or. Though Dubois later attends college for physicians, his tute­ lage under Rhubarbin guides his practice. Dubois's questioning of established medical opinion, and his confidence in his own medical knowledge, enable him to succeed where the nation's most renowned physicians fail. Adelaide is on her deathbed. Only Dubois recognizes that the vast quantities of 'nauseous medicines' her physicians prescribe are keeping her ill (1: 37-8) . Dubois blends his own prescriptions with her food so that she can neither taste them nor feel any ill effects. She is cured, and 'Dubois was now 152

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman

idealized in the family, and everyone entertained . . . the highest estimation of his medical skill' (1: 42). Mr de Ceare invites Dubois to tend his daughter during her convalescence, never imagining that Adelaide - a marchioness's daughter - could fall in love with an apothecary's son Gulie's father, of course, draws a similar conclu­ sion about her tutor, St Preux). Even as Adelaide proves him wrong, she remains dutiful, as does Dubois. The language of Burke's Reflections structures their interactions, shifting the ' I' of sentimental logic to the 'we' of the providential order. As Adelaide explains to her beloved: We are not born for each other, believe me, though when I assure you, that your origin would not raise a scruple in my mind, I cannot dispose of myself, or I would freely accept of your hand at this moment; but there is not the slightest shadow of a hope that such an event will ever take place, and I tremble, even at the bare idea of my father's even suspecting what has just passed between us! . . . He has other views for me; therefore, let us jointly determine to stifle our unfortunate inclinations, which can only serve to make us both miserable. (1: 8G-l)

Like Burke, Adelaide recognizes the prejudice behind policy, but where the British sage 'employs [his] sagacity' to 'discover [preju­ dice 's] latent wisdom',l1 the Minerva heroine demonstrates what Burke claims is true for the larger maj ority: 'prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit.'12 Adelaide will 'stifle' her feelings. Dubois's reasoning reflects a worldview as conservative as Adelaide's. When pronouncing his love for the marchioness's daugh­ ter, his phrasing recalls Burke 's glorification of the age of chivalry. Like the courageous but obedient knight, Dubois is honoured by his subservience: You generously forbear to humble me more than I already am, by my own insignificance; but mine is not an ordinary passion, it resem­ bles idolatry . . . believe me, madam, I am too sensible of my own disadvantages, to preswne to fonn any [hope]; but as for promising even to endeavor to forget you . . . I never shall; I glory in my passion, it is a part of my existence. (1: 82-3) 153

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Dubois and Adelaide both attempt to check their passion by the self-policing that is part and product of their habitual frames of mind. The young man's presumption and the young lady's pride are products of the same socio-political code. Each supports the other, making possible the respectful servility and dutiful paternalism that Burke argues makes a hierarchical society tolerable for all. Like any sentimental heroine, Adelaide refuses all other suitors. When Mr de Ceare insists that she marry a wealthy man of rank, she flees her father's household for a nearby abbey, trusting his footman, Champagne, to be her guide. The footman turns out to be a robber who intends to abandon Adelaide in the forest. Dubois serendipitously arrives on the scene, and after a violent scene Champagne hurries home to ingratiate himselfwith his master. De Ceare accepts Champagne's story that Dubois is a villain bent on seducing his daughter and that he, the footman, had been inveigled into accompanying them. Prejudice predisposes de Ceare to presume his servant's unaffected deference. Champagne's servility hides his criminality, and Dubois stands accused of the footman's crimes. More than this, though, he becomes in a literal sense Champagne's replacement. Meeke, by way of the commoner-to-nobleman formula, lays the groundwork for this substitution early in her novel. Though Dubois's service to the de Ceare household had been a favour, Mr de Ceare had half-imagined the young man a hireling of the house: Dubois's profession; the forced simplicity and gravity of his dress; the lowness of his origin, all combined to prevent his looking upon him as a dangerous companion for Mademoiselle de Ceare; he merely looked upon him as he would have done upon her dancing, or music, master, and never once preswned to think he would dare to love a woman, so every way his superior, and still less, that she would listen to such a man. (1: 58)

Mr de Ceare visits Dubois's judge, the high-ranking President of Parlement prior to the trial, aiming to convince the judge to do 'justice'. If Dubois is not made an example for all other 'low wretches', the 'welfare of the nation' is at stake: 154

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman Dubois should be made an example of to prevent other low wretches from forming similar designs against the honour of ancient families; for was such a daring villain to escape being broken on the wheel, it would be precedent for any rascal to run away with the daughter of the first nobleman in the land with impunity. (1: 149-50)

The President emphatically agrees with de Ceare:'yes, sir, you are perfectly in the right, yours is a common cause, and I promise you, you shall have justice done you; nothing surprises me in the people you complain of, you have to do with wretches, capable of any crimes' (1: 163). The President sentences Dubois to death on the wheel. The President, de Ransai, is known throughout France as a just and merciful judge, and Meeke devotes nearly a third of her novel to the story of why he steps out of character by promising de Ceare to forgo his usual policy of clemency. Twenty-two years earlier, de Ransai (formerly the Count St Blancard) eloped with a beautiful but fortuneless Englishwoman. On discovery of the marriage, his tyrannical father masterminded a plot to dispose of both wife and child. The infant was abandoned outside Rhubarbin's shop. Even as the President and his wife reunited, they were anguished by the loss of their son. On discovering where he had been abandoned, they were overjoyed. Rhubarbin's insistence that he had never seen the infant belied their expectations and they had concluded he was a 'miserable wretch' and 'barbarian' who sought to torment them. The President sees Dubois's trial as an opportunity for revenge: I am convinced, I have not a doubt, but the son has imbibed all his culpable father's principles . . . I will acknowledge to you, that I am delighted; you have afforded me the opportunity of revenging myself upon this vile Apothecary, in doing nothing more than my duty, and in serving the publick. Would to God I could as easily prove the father's crimes, as you can the son's. (1: 162-3)

Both de Ceare and de Ransai use the word 'wretch' to describe the apothecary and his son. De Ceare 's use echoes Burke 's. It oper­ ates for him as both a particular and a generality. In de Ceare's eyes 155

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

Dubois is a type, a person who because of his low origins always poses potential danger to the nation, as defined by its upper-class families. In contrast, the President intends this term only as a particularity. For de Ransai, the 'wretches' in question are always and only the apothecary and his son. But despite going to this length to downplay de Ransai's prejudice as personal, Meeke also shows that the President's assumptions about Dubois originate in a real prejudice. He presumes that an apothecary is low and mercenary and even potentially lacking in human feeling. As he accounts to de Ceare, when justifYing his long-standing disdain for the apothecary: ' [another] thought at last struck me, which originated in his profession; I really began to fancy he had murdered our child, to conceal his having found it, or for the sake of making experiments upon the body of the innocent creature' (3: 168). De Ransai adds that when he had voiced his suspicions, Rhubarbin had put forth an articulate defence based on the strength of his professional reputation: I

known, my Lord, in my profession, for a man of honour, and thank God, incapable of the horrid action you lay to my charge; had you said as much before witnesses, notwithstanding the superi­ ority of your rank, I might make you repent having dared to accuse me thus scandalously: however, my reputation is too well established to be hurt by such an unlikely story. (3: 169) am

am,

The President, convinced on the latter point, never doubts that Rhubarbin had taken in the child. Practically the only configuration beyond the scope of his imagination is the truth. Never once does de Ransai consider that Rhubarbin might have raised the boy as his own son and that he cannot bear to give him up. Readers have access to the President's thoughts, and Dubois's self-defence has convinced the judge of his innocence. Now only pretending to think Dubois is guilty, de Ransai drives the anguished Rhubarbin to disclose all. Rhubarbin's son is the President de Ransai's. The President is 'astonished' by the apothecary's emotion. The man he imagines to be a 'miserable wretch', a 'barbarian' , stands before him 'pale as death' (2: 187) , and reveals Dubois's true identity: 156

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman Looking half wild, he had clasped his hands, and said: '1 will this very day return to you all the trinkets which are to confinn my loss, for 1 dare not hope you will still consent to your son passing for mine, though the loss of him, oh heavens! . . . will be almost the death of me.' (2: 199)

It need hardly be said that Rhubarbin's disclosure leaves the President fully sympathetic to Dubois's cause.Yet de Ransai cannot bring the trial to a close without proof of Dubois's innocence.13 As they wait for further evidence, the sordid conditions of Dubois's prison and his attendant state of mind have their effect. He falls into a deep fever and both his fathers suffer enormously. After Dubois's fever breaks, Rhubarbin tells him the truth. Meeke height­ ens the emotional intensity of the scene, emphasizing Rhubarbin's anguish and his dread that his beloved son will now despise him. Dubois responds feelingly to his father, who is on his knees before him: 'Please pray quit that humble posture. If I am not your son, I am your pupil, the child of your adoption . . . I therefore owe you all the more since all that you have done for me has been the result of your generosity and innate goodness' (3: 122-3). Dubois (now Count St Blancard) is innately noble. He would, of course, forgive the man who humbles himself before him. St Blancard is also Rhubarbin's pupil, however, something of which he is keen to remind his adoptive father. Meeke has already modelled one unconventional epistemic interchange. Rhubarbin's talent and knowledge in his line ofwork challenge an elitist model of knowledge production. She codes a second the same way, and in such a way that invokes Minerva's network of providential novels: 'I often think, 'tis a great pity,' said Rhubarbin, sarcastically looking at Mr de Ceare, 'our characters and origins are not wrote more legibly upon our foreheads; it was astonishing you could ever suppose the Count St. Blancard was my son.' (3: 156)

As Meeke's readers well know, the commoner-to-nobleman hero's origins are affectively written on his forehead via providential signs like the hero's exemplarity or the intense feeling that draws together long-lost relations separated by crime or family ambition. 157

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By pretending otherwise, Meeke subtly guides her readers to an unconventional reading of the providential conclusion. Rhubarbin may be speaking to de Ceare, but de Ransai is listening. It is unsurprising that de Ceare (not noble-minded himself) does not recognize Dubois for who and what he is, but the fact that de Ransai does not is astounding. Rhubarbin's feelings for Dubois are certainly no less than de Ransai's - and by providential logic they even surpass the nobleman's, who was so blinded by prejudice that he does not feel that expected yet seemingly inexplicable draw to his own son. While Dubois (now Count St Blancard) leaves medical practice to take up law, his shop education has trained him to question the judgement and authority of his superiors. Dubois's resistance to studying medicine is evidence of this formula's conservative politics, but his continued regard, even love, for Rhubarbin illuminates an alternative social motive for the commoner-to-nobleman formula as it operates in use across Minerva's wider network of novels. Rather than represent most writers as servile, authors contest where, how and by whom knowledge is formed.

6:2 Jacson and Rerouting the Providential Novel to America In destabilizing providential logic, Meeke is assisted by the challenge that apothecaries already pose to long-established, class-based distinctions in the medical profession. As Frances Jacson's Disobedience (1 797) suggests, authors who intend to undermine prejudicial habits of mind really should reroute the providential novel to American soi1.Jacson debuted with Minerva in 1795, and published three additional novels with other presses in the 1810s and 1820s. Her novels have been described as didactic and even c ounter­ revolutionary, but reading them as part of Minerva's network provides an alternative perspective. 14 Disobedience twists the common­ er-to-nobleman formula by offering a hero as extraordinary as any providential hero, but one who remains a farmer's son while coming to feel that he is inferior to no one. Disobedience may be an exception to the general rule that Minerva novelists avoid writing explicitly revolutionary novels, but it is also a quintessential Minerva novel. 158

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman

That Jacson uses the commoner-to-nobleman formula with famil­ iarity and finesse provides her with the opportunity to extend the providential novel's purview, both geographically as well as politi­ cally, to a revolutionary conclusion. Jacson's providential heroine disobeys her new-found noble parents, abandoning them for a life with her childhood sweetheart, William: Nature had endowed William with requisites far beyond those which are generally esteemed necessary for the station for which he was designed. To health, strength, and activity, she had added not only a vigorous and clear llllderstanding, with an ardent love of employment, but she had given him an integrity not to be shaken. (1: 33)

Mary and William create a new Elysium in Kentucky, and the novel concludes with a portrait of the happy wife and mother, surrounded by her children as they embrace a life of industry. Jacson either has not read, or else pointedly ignores, women's American sentimental novels. Most, as Cathy Davidson argues, end with the heroine's seduction and death, 15 a case in point being the transatlantic Minerva author, Susannah Rowson's Charlotte Temple, which Rowson orig­ inally published as Charlotte: A Tale ofTruth with Minerva in 179 1 . That novel begins in England, where Charlotte lives an idyllic life until seduced by the false promises of an officer about to leave for America. Rowson provides a detailed glimpse of Charlotte's trials in Philadelphia, from her dangerous overseas voyage to isolation and poverty, and an ignominious death bearing an illegitimate daughter. Charlotte's story differs from the sentimental heroines I discussed in Section One, many of whom survive - and of those who die, having parted from their beloved with the assurance that their love is requited and eternal. Where Charlotte: A Tale of Truth was neither singled out by critics nor published in subsequent editions, Charlotte Temple resonated with American readers, becom­ ing an almost immediate bestseller when published in Philadelphia in 1794 (Davidson surmises that American readers remained nostalgic for England, as exemplified in Charlotte's yearning for her homeland). Simply put, Charlotte does not read as part of Minerva's network and Disobedience does.16 159

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

Disobedience opens with the backstory, so as to immediately orient readers to the novel's secret: the heroine Mary's identity. Mary's adoptive parents, Eleanor and Richard, had been servants to the same family. Both had worked their way up from positions of housemaid and groomsman, finally marrying when able to rent a small farm in Wales. Jacson favourably contrasts their plain story to a more typical love affair. When Eleanor and Richard were still in service, the young lady of the household, Lady Caroline, had begged Eleanor for advice, being madly in love with a young, penniless officer, Mr Seabright. Eleanor advises her to wait, but Lady Caroline promptly elopes with Seabright to Scotland. Later, she abandons their infant daughter with Eleanor, noting: 'if we grow rich in India, you shall be sure to hear from us; if not, you must teach it to milk the goats and look after the sheep.'17 Mary grows up as a farmer's daughter without any knowledge of her origins. Beauty and intellect are vvritten into the commoner-to-noblewoman formula, but Jacson makes a point of noting that this providential heroine is also innately stubborn, saucy and prideful - something that her adoptive parents strive to correct and with general success (1: 29-30; also 49). Mary's native temperament is not unlike Lady Caroline's, but Mary, generous and forbearing, bears the stamp of her adoptive mother. Mary falls in love with William, creating a conundrum for Eleanor, who worries that Lady Caroline may eventually return to Wales to claim Mary. When William proposes to Mary, Eleanor finds in recourse to providential language: ' I cannot think Mary is born for you' ( 1 : 105). As Jacson signals readers to anticipate, Lady Caroline and Seabright sweep into the village to claim Mary as their own (their two sons have died, and now all their ambitions are harboured in Mary). Oddly, Mary does not feel as she should - or at least, her hesitancy strikes Lady Caroline as odd. When Mary, loath to leave the parents who raised her for a new life in London, clings to Eleanor, Lady Caroline accuses her oflacking feeling: ' I should have thought the force of blood to her own father and mother would have been sufficient to have awakened her affection' (1: 181). Lady Caroline is horrified when she learns that her daughter has a rustic lover, but she presumes that any daughter of hers will, once de-rusticated, share her sentiments. Later, when Mary refuses to 160

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman

marry a man offashion (Lord St Albans), her mother laments, 'would to God that you had never been born!' (3: 106). As described in Chapter 5 , Burke summons the affective ties that he claims unite families (and by extension, the larger nation) in order to contend that revolutionary sentiment weakens these ties. Jacson shows the irony, adding yet another heroine to the list of those who suffer maltreatment by ambitious parents bent on an advantageous marriage. Mary's parents imprison her in their home when she refuses to marry Lord St Albans. She escapes through a subterranean passage, and, providentially, she and William reunite. When William reflects on the fact that Mary has chosen him over the noble St Albans, he is startled not to feel the abject emotions that a young man of'plebeian blood' should feel before his superiors. William's surprise prompts him to interrogate his presumptions about what he should feel, at point of which he substitutes the natural rights of man for providential logic: Where was then the plebeian blood that is said to flow in my veins, and which ought, at such an instant, to have ebbed back to my heart, from a sense of conscious inferiority? Where that hwnble spirit, which, appreciating my merit by my rank, ought to have bowed submissively to my fate? Where that sense of the advantages attendant on the immaculate preservation of the different orders, which they tell us has been felt by the wise and good of all ages? . . . I felt I knew myself to be Lord St. Alban's [sic] equal; his superior in all that distinguishes guilt from innocence. (4: 23) -

In most Minerva novels,William's feeling that he is Lord St Albans's equal, and even his superior, would signal the novel's secret. William would sense his equality because of his noble birth.Yet the fact that Minerva novelists presume that their readers are familiar with popular formulas allows for suspended disbelief. Despite who and what William is, his proclamation still reads as revolutionary. In other words, a retreat to providential logic would not entirely negate William's earlier position, and would indeed be a safer move, given critics' tendency to police novels for revolutionary politics.William is good, hard-working, just and talented. Jacson shows that nobility is constituted by character traits rather than by birth, and that for 161

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

nobility so defined to flourish, her providential couple must leave England. Mary returns in order to transplant Lady Caroline (now widowed, poor and abandoned by her friends) in their American paradise. Jacson c oncludes with the didactic note that her provi­ dential romance may be an antidote for sentimental novels and their quixotic readers: If the fate of Lady Caroline warns us what to shun, let the example of William and Mary instruct us what to pursue. Let us consider their felicity not as the romantic vision of an overheated imagination, but as the natural result of their moderation, their industry, and their benevolence. (4: 266)

This conclusion squares with Anthony MandaI's description of Jacson's novels as 'moral-domestic' and as part of the anti-Jacobin effort to 'curtail the wanton production offiction' .1S Joan Percy also acknowledges Jacson's didactic strain, but she compares Jacson's spirited heroines to Fanny Burney's and Charlotte Smith's. Perhaps because Percy's aim is to reinstate Jacson in literary history, she remains trapped in a classic Romantic notion of authorship, conclud­ ing that ' Frances Jacson owed no specific debt to others.'19 Percy overlooks Jacson's 'debt' to popular conventions because for Percy, Jacson is weakest when belaboured by the 'trappings of a gothic romance'?o Locating Disobedience in Minerva's larger network has suggested just the contrary IfJacson's novel is unusual for its overtly democratic tone, its communitarian use of popular conventions is typica1.Jacson does not belittle the commoner-to-nobleman formula or other writers who use it; instead she shows that the formula is itself a site for political commentary and formal innovation. It is instructive to compare Jacson's novel to the notorious Jacobin novel, Hermsprong (1796), as it too is a Minerva nove1.21 Robert Bage's American-born hero enrages the tyrannical Lord Grondale by refusing to treat him as his superior: 'by what right do you presume to speak to me with the tone of a master? l owe you no obedience ; and despise you for your contentious and tyrannical spirit.'22 While Hermsprong insists on the 'natural rights of man', he ultimately discloses that he is a nobleman: 'My father's real name was Campinet. He was the elder brother of Lord Grondale . . . I am 162

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman

his only son' (p. 227). Hermsprong returns as head of the family estate, and to the social order he disdains. Critics generally read this conclusion as Bage's concession to the market, and as Marilyn Butler notes, 'the reader cannot help feeling conned.'23 I concur, adding only that this insight applies just as aptly to other readers than the 'Jac obins' that Butler appears to have in mind. While a novelist like Jacson treats the commoner-to-nobleman formula as an oppor­ tunity to contest habitual feelings and mindsets, Hermsprong has always known 'who' and 'what' he is, and in retrospect it is unsur­ prising that he finds it so easy to denounce his supposed superiors. Butler's projected reader is much like Bage himself, as he treats the commoner-to-nobleman as a concession, apparently overlooking its potential for epistemic challenge to a hierarchical social order.24

6:3 Anon Again: Sensibility Revisited My first two examples exemplify one trend at Minerva's zenith: a shift from sentimental narratives. This is not to say that sentimental feeling is absent from these novels. On the contrary, novelists like Meeke and Jacson continue to rely on sentimental logic, but in such a way that confirms Nicola Watson's observation that the sentimental heroine persists in the late 1790s primarily as an after­ life." While Dubois and Adelaide are sentimental lovers, Meeke softens the effect with the providential language that effectually speaks through them, signalling readers to see that their love befits a hierarchal social order. Mary and William have long loved each other, and yet in the early part of the novel Jacson privileges a pastoral frame over a sentimental one (the young Welsh lovers are gentle, rustic and innocent) and later she rushes her lovers' reunion so as to focus on their domestic life in Kentucky. As I have posited, sentimental logic orients writers to be interested in feeling as a source of knowledge. This is as true for vanguard writers as for Minerva novelists. If Minerva novelists are apt to follow Burke in privileging providential feeling, other period writ­ ers, most famously Wordsworth, reorient sentimental logic towards a new poetics.26 The author of my third example, The Heir of Montague (1798), creates an elaborate sentimental frame for 163

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

Frederic's commoner-to-nobleman drama. Frederic lives out his own sentimental love story - but the energy of the novel, by which I mean the interaction between the author and the genre 's social motive, becomes evident when Frederic is pursuing work as a ploughman. This anonymous Minerva author works with the same structure offeeling that Wordsworth so eloquently articulates in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads.Wordsworth's revolutionary poetics attrib­ ute the potential for finer feelings to anyone, and particularly those in 'low and rustic life'. Frederic is raised by his uncle, Henry Montague, and treated as his rightful heir, until Henry's deceitful sister Margaret spins a story that the real Frederic died in infancy and that the son of a local nursemaid had been supplied in his place. Montague is already incensed at Frederic for disobeying his injunction not to court Emma Neville, a young woman without fortune. On hearing Margaret's story, Montague disinherits Frederic: 'You are no child of my sister! . . . base bantling! Changling! Imposter! '" Frederic spends the second half of the novel wandering or working as a ploughman. His commoner-to-nobleman drama originates a gener­ ation back. This itself is typical and even necessary for the formula, i.e. infants must be swapped, a ship must wreck, etc. Details are usually disclosed near the novel's end, but the author of The Heir ofMontague does the reverse, devoting the first chapters of the novel to Frederic's family of origin. Frederic's grandfather, Montague, marries for love only to discover that his wife is mercenary and selfish. When she dies in childbirth, Montague favours the youngest of their three children, Emmeline, for her tenderness and sensibility. Emmeline is typecast as a quixotic female reader whose life will be ruined by the sentimental novels with which Montague supplies her: 'The susceptible Emmeline sucked in the delicious poison with but too much eagerness; her young heart was warmed by the expanded sentiment, and her imagination inflamed by the laboured description' (1: 12). Fitting the stereotype, Emmeline elopes to Scotland. The author has cued readers to expect that Emmeline has deceived herself - perhaps her lover is a cad who will desert her ­ but the pair marry and Osmond proves a loving husband. Because of her sister's contrivances, Emmeline never reconciles with her father, and Frederic is born in a small cottage near Montague's 164

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman

estate. As we might expect in a novel where sentimental fiction is portrayed as 'poison' , the lovers die, as does the heartbroken Montague. The orphan, Frederic, grows into early childhood with the neigh­ bouring rustics. When Emmeline's brother, Henry, discovers that this beautiful child is his sister's, he raises him as his son and heir. Frederic's feelings orient him outwards , to refle ct on the question of his larger purpose in society. He keenly feels an obligation to his uncle but does not yearn for the gentleman's brand of inde­ pendence - wealth. Instead, he looks to the men on his uncle's fields with envy: 'Yes, yes, I every day feel I am a dependent!- but, oh! how happy should I be to hold the plough, or fill the cart, if ! could but earn subsistence, rather than owe fortune to those who are capable of reproaching me with want of it' (1: 100). One day Frederic takes up the plough. Walking home and musing over the day's pleasures, he sees a carriage overturn. The driver is pinned under the carriage and in danger of being trampled by his horse, and the young lady passenger has fainted nearby. Frederic will fall in love with this lady, Miss Emma Neville. Frederic calls out to Will, a young passing ploughman, for assistance. Despite Frederic's impression of Will as 'surly' and 'non-civil' , Will acts immediately, freeing the man and then running for help: The young man had no sooner observed how affairs stood, than with great coolness and intrepidity he advanced to the chair, and with one wrench, tore aSllllder the llllder shaft, which had been much shattered in the fall, then lifted the chair, and raising the unfortunate man in his anns, carried him to some distance and laid him gently on the grass; upon examination, finding his leg much broken, he took his handkerchief from his neck, and bound it round as well as he could; then addressing Frederic, 'And now, Mr Osmond,' said he, 'what can we do?' (1: 117)

Readers are provided access to Frederic's thoughts but not Will's. As the action unfolds,Will's behaviour and his response to Frederic reveal a tension between Frederic 's assumptions about his inferior and Will's own habits of mind. Frederic cannot attribute to Will the same feelings he recognizes in himself,Wollstonecraft's feelings of'humanity' .2sThe author never states it explicitly, but as the men 165

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

talk, it becomes evident that Frederic is nonplussed by Will's failure to fit his expectations for a ploughman. The author introduces this idea through a variation on the commoner-to-nobleman's affective clues. Frederic's greatest unease and sense of dislocation is the product of his interactions with Will: 'My good fellow;' said [Frederic], 'I have given you much trouble, there is a trifle for you,' offering him half a guinea. [Will] looked at it some time, and then at Frederic, with much surprise; then putting it back with his hand,- 'no, no, sir,' said he, 'take back your money; if you've a mind to order us a cup of ale, it is all very well.' Somewhat offended at this manner of speech, Frederic rather angrily, again offered him the money; insisting upon paying him for his trouble. 'And pray,' said [Will], still refusing it, 'what is to pay you for your's?' 'Me!' cried Frederic, 'the pleasure of having it in my power to afford assistance in distress.' 'Very well, sir, then, if you are satisfied so am I.' And with that he was walking away with great indifference; but Frederic, always resolute, and particularly so when urged by his feelings, ordered him to stop, in a peremptory tone. 'Young man,' said he, 'I do not understand this; 1 insist on your accepting what 1 offer you.' (1: 17)

Frederic may soliloquize about the life of the ploughman but he sets himself apart from his 'comrades', associating finer feelings with a gentleman's rank and education. Along with his desire for independence, Frederic also enviously idealizes the ploughmen's sense of community: 'whilst he saw the ploughman, the mower, or the reaper, at work in the valley below, he would envy their cheerful song. "Ah!" he would say, with a sigh, "they are blessed with society'" (1: 96). The author associates genu­ ine feeling with the 'low and rustic,' much as Wordsworth would in 180029 - though in contrast to the suffering that Wordsworth witnesses and then reimagines for his lyrical ballads , Will figures in Frederic's imagination as a pastoral figure, apolitical and ahistorical. That Will reveals the inherent contradiction of Frederic's reveries makes them topical, a point that the author advances by setting the novel in 1790s Britain. Anti-Jacobin references to the French Revolution debate are peppered throughout the novel. For example, 166

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman

the only proponent of French liberties is Frederic's deceitful Aunt Margaret, and when disinherited, Frederic happens on a festival with effigies ofTom Paine and Dr Price. This anti-Jacobin posturing is undermined not, as we will see, by Frederic 's initial reveries about life as a ploughman but, rather, by Will's impact on Frederic's thinking once he is reduced to 'common' origins. While Frederic and Will's friendship deepens as the novel progresses, they do not meet again till Frederic is expelled from his home, and they never become sentimental friends. Earlier in the novel, when in London, Frederic develops such a friendship with a sorrowful young gentleman, Delaval. The friendship appears to be a direct commentary on Frederic's romantic reveries about the ploughman and his interactions with Will. Delaval had for some time attempted to live out the romantic, rustic life that Frederic himself envisages: Awkward rusticity appeared to me simple honesty . . . I imagined myself in Arcadia, among the innocent men of the golden age, where I was beloved and respected. (2: 68)

Never associate familiarly with your inferiors; with their respect you lose their affection: they always despise those who are ready to undervalue themselves . . . to expect their friendship is an ideal chimera; no friendship can exist except between equals in situation. (2: 70)

Delaval's insights initially undermine the author's earlier care with the scenes involving Will. There, the implication had been that Will's 'surliness' and 'incivility' was a gentleman's incorrect read on a char­ acter type that he presumes he already knows. The ploughman should be affable, easy to work with, and (lacking the subtler sensi­ bilities of the gentleman) will happily accept handouts from his betters.\Vhile Frederic's desire to earn his own independence echoes the eighteenth-century 'cultural revolution' that redefined masculine honour by new middle-class values,30 this Minerva novelist invokes French revolutionary logic by extending masculine virtue and 167

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

honour to the ploughman - that is, until Delaval provides a counter­ argument. The author provides no direct rebuttal, but ensuing events suggest that Deleval's experience is not meant to be the final word on how we should read Frederic's interactions with Will. Once disinherited, Frederic rej oins Will, who shelters him from an oncoming storm and, to Frederic's surprise, returns the money Frederic had forced on him earlier: 'I am young and in health, I want help from nobody; and I can always keep myself' (2: 139). Will, self-reliant, hard-working, noble-minded, fits the eighteenth­ century ideal for virtuous masculinity - though this ideal was imagined by and for men with more gentlemanly pursuits than following a plough. The author then takes this revolutionary idea one step further by representing Will's masculine virtue as a correc­ tive to Frederic's. Frederic romanticizes the life of a ploughman until he is faced with actually living it, at which point he denigrates it to such a degree that it becomes unrecognizable to Will: Now I am quite forgotten as in had never been; and must, my hands softened, my person enervated by sloth and by indulgence, be forced to labour all the day; to bear the heat of swnrner, the wintry cold, without hope, but to gain a scanty subsistence, without end but with my life; and before that life shall close, to wear out perhaps a miser­ able old age, despised, neglected, indigent: Perhaps - heavens! . . . perhaps to pass the evening of my life in some loathsome workhouse, cursing my miserable hours away.' 'Oh! Mr Frederic . . . do not put the worst face upon things: must not every one of us poor fellows suffer all that you have said? But indeed it is not so: don't think that nobody but the rich are happy, and why should you think you are not able to work? (2: 165-6)

Will provides Frederic with new language and imagery Still, Frederic has a hard time amending his own views. He takes up a life as a labourer and at first is quite awkward with the plough. If, however, 'his natural strength and dexterity' help him learn quickly, he is also changed by the work he does: Low and miserable in appearance, Frederic felt peace and happiness returning fast to his bosom; taught by adversity to reflect, he felt the 168

The Commoner Teaches the Nobleman prejudice of education wearing away; and nothing but wounded pride, the idle pride of birth, could hurt him now. (2: 166)

The author, however, somewhat retracts this revolutionary thought by recalling Delaval's point of view. Just as his noble friend had suggested, Frederic poignantly feels the narrowness of his society until he introduces arts and education into the circle, at which point he becomes the benevolent gentleman-figure of providential logic. Later, he is reinstated to his rights, apparently unchanged by his adventure. The novel c oncludes with Frederic's marriage to Emily Neville. Most Minerva novelists do not break explicitly with social and literary conventions. Readers will anticipate Frederic's reinstate­ ment, but, for a brief while, the providential hero becomes the common labourer; yet not the labourer as Frederic had envisaged him, whether as a romanticized rustic, in happy communion with his brethren, or as an overworked and impoverished soul, old before his time. The author enc ourages readers to read Frederic as Will. For example, consider the author's framing narrative, which features Frederic's mother as the quixotic female reader. Emmeline's senti­ mental novels shape her worldview and, in turn, her life. She writes herself into her own sentimental novel, of which Frederic is the offspring. Emmeline comes to repent her error, longing for nothing but the restoration of her family, something that she herself cannot achieve but that her son, her brother's rightful heir, can and does when he marries Miss Neville. As earlier parts of the book establish, critical discourse on female novel readers features in many Minerva novels. Often this discourse initially appears to denigrate novels and their readers, but more often than not, the novelist unsettles or reorients this discourse, showing it to be a prime site for entering debates and creating authorial community. Though Frederic is not represented as an author-figure, The Heir of Montague is one of the many Minerva novels that take stock of emergent redefinitions of authorship and literature. The author invokes the sentimental novels of the preced­ ing decade but also represents sentimental feeling as analogous to imagination, a capacity that is unique to the sensitive individual and that may produce new insights. Early in the novel, Frederic 169

Minerva and the Politics of Feeling

imagines himself in the ploughman's place, a comparable situation to the quixotic female reader who imagines herself as the heroine of a sentimental novel. Frederic learns from Will, but only when reduced by circumstance to the same humble state. Much like the female novel-reader-turned-writer, as portrayed by period critics, Frederic's quixotic daydreams ultimately reveal more about his limited vision than his depth of feeling. The author does not allow Will a full humanity, if measured by the sentimental novel (that is, Will does not pine away like Delaval and Frederic when separated from his beloved) ; however, by being allowed to correct Frederic's vision,Will becomes an intermediary author-figure, an auxiliary to Frederic's imagination. The Heir of Montague invites comparisons to both Godwin's and Wordsworth's output in the 1790s and furthers my argument that during Minerva's zenith period, the Revolution debate draws canonical and Minerva writers closer together. This moment is fleet­ ing and, when measured by Romantic exchange's impact on canonical authors, is best exemplified by Things As They Are. Romantic redefin­ itions of literature and authorship eventua11y reduce Romantic exchange to one site of interaction - Romantic anxiety - of which Wordsworth's 180011802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads serves as a found­ ational text. Though Wordsworth draws from critical discourse about the quixotic female reader to theorize a new model for poetic invention, he treats popular conventions themselves as merely a foil. In 1833, Mill contrasts 'eloquence', or the author's effort to arouse his audience's feelings, to 'true poetry', which he defines as 'feeling confessing itself to itself, in moments of solitude'. 31 We might read Wordsworth's Preface as an 'eloquent' effort to create an audience susceptible to 'true poetry'. At Minerva's zenith, its authors already presume an audience susceptible to their negotiations with popular conventions because they place their authority in the wider network of providential and sentimental novels. Novels published in Minerva's period of decline, from Minerva authors' to Percy Shelley's, suggest that prolific novelists were by this time more explicitly identifYing both the limits and the possibilities of popular conventions for authorial innovation or what Anis Bawarshi ca11s invention. In analys­ ing Shelley's gothics in light of these Minerva novels, Section Three illuminates the forgotten poetics of Romantic exchange. 170

Section I I I

The Forgotten Poetics of Romantic Exchange: G o thic Habits of Mind

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Section Overview

The publishing records verifY that Minerva no longer dominates the novel market by the mid- to late 1800s, but Section Three makes the case that its network continued to influence writers through the 1810s, and for two reasons. First, from Minerva's early rise through its zenith period, the Press's prolific production of sentimental and providential novels primed its novelists to treat popular conventions as attached to the desires and values that reproduce themselves through a genre and its authors. Second, as Minerva became a presence in the market, first-generation Romantics drew a similar conclusion.As we have seen,Wollstonecraft, Godwin and Wordsworth all treat the writing process as originating with writers' subjectivity to their own habits of mind, with the caveat that the rare individual can break free of these mental habits through a rigorous process of self-analysis. Such a writer is free to transcend his day, envisaging new possibilities for himself and his contemporaries while shaping the taste and sensibilities of future readers. Whereas Wordsworth models this process in the Preface by showcasing the Poet's ability to create his own seemingly 'mechan­ ical' habits of mind, Wo11stonecraft and Godwin come closer to a full exchange with Minerva's network by acknowledging that they too are subject to conventional feelings and thus not free to tran­ scend the market entirely, as Wordsworth claims to be. Yet Wo11stonecraft and Godwin differ in the way that they represent their own use of popular conventions. Whereas in Wrongs, Wo11stonecraft contrasts servility to freedom by showing that conventional feelings burden the discerning feminist author,

Gothic Habits of Mind

Godwin shows that these feelings have their use. In Things As They Are, the visionary writer will reach his audience only when he shares to some degree their habits of mind and emotions. Earlier I suggested that an inclusive definition of the Minerva novelist reveals that Minerva's influence persists through the 1810s. Though the market has become more stratified, novelists who publish with Minerva early in its run tend to continue publishing novels, with Minerva and elsewhere. Additionally, a handful of novelists who debut in the 1810s publish both prolifically and primarily with Minerva. Section Three takes up my title phrase, 'Minerva's Gothics', to consider how novelists of both types exem­ plifY the Press's continued influence. The novels examined read as a medley of Minerva's most popular conventions and at first glance may appear an odd choice for this discussion on the gothic, being that they are set in modern England and the supernatural, explained or otherwise, is not a theme. ' Gothic ' , however, remains apropos, as novelists reclaim formulaic writing from critics who by the 1810s were associating the gothic with Minerva, and by extension, prolific print culture l Novels display 'gothic ' habits of mind, or attention to how shared conventions delimit but also enable new visions. As a sign of the times, these novels often feature poet-figures and the language and conventions of genius. Michael Gamer demonstrates the inexorable entanglement of the gothic with what comes to be called 'high Romanticism', a case in point being writers' efforts to exploit market interest in the supernatural while also distancing themselves from circulating-library readers and writers. This complicated dance is exemplified by Wordsworth's 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads. The Preface, commonly read as a 'manifesto', is more defensive than offensive, a reaction to critical reviews that lambasted the 1798 volume for its gothic qualities .' Gamer corrects an overgeneralization about Wordsworth's defensive attitude in the Preface while still showing that the cultural antipathy to gothic conventions surfaces in his poetics, helping to solidify emergent distinctions between the 'high' and 'low'. Minerva novelists recycle the sublimity and originality of genius to authorize their undiscerning model of authorship, as illustrated by earlier examples in Minerva's network (e.g. Rosina, 1793; What Has Been, 1801). By Minerva's late period, novelists deploy the 174

Section Overview

gothic as it is represented in critical discourse - as an economy of readers-turned-writers. Once again, writers draw from Romantic redefinitions of authorship and literature to write about writing, just as they did when making their meta-discursive turn on the trope of 'genius '. Such turns are what Janet Giltrow would call 'meta-genre': the 'rules, silences, gestures, collocates, complaints, habituated up-takes, warnings, homilies' that 'flourish at the thresh­ olds of communities of discourse'.3 Meta-genres naturalize genres, by 'rationalizing and representing' them to the writers who use them.4 In representing themselves as part of, rather than above, the gothic economy, novelists write meta-discursive novels apparently designed for each other. While most Minerva novelists probably did not imagine them­ selves as in direct exchange with anyone other than each other, their shared circuit of conventions inspires concurrent conversations that draw together the Press's inclusive network of writers with the discriminating few. By Minerva's late period, its continued influence is best measured by this intersection between Minerva and more exclusive authorial circles. When Minerva authors represent indi­ vidual novels as co-authored by Minerva's network, they suggest that reproductive novels enable revisions to shared habits of mind. Though these novelists do not go so far as to identify all visionary thinking as originating in convention, the implications for other types of writing surface in Shelley's 'A Defence of Poetry' (1821). I demonstrate that Shelley's gothics, Zastrozzi (1810) and St. Irvyne (1811), are an important influence on the idealized Poet of 'Defence'. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, in turn, are shown to be influ­ enced by Minerva's larger network even as they also reveal Shelley's debt to Wordsworth's poetics. Recent retrospectives on Shelley's work exemplify the current diversity of writers, genres and tastes engaged by studies of the Romantic era, as well as the diversity of the kinds of questions that get asked about them.' Today, Shelley's prose is treated with as much sensitivity as his poetry and even his two jejune gothic novels, St. Irvyne in particular, are considered legitimate precursors to some of his most significant later works. That these novels are studied at all is a sign of changing times, though approaches to them are generally consistent with the older parameters of Romantic-era studies. For 175

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a long time, scholars found Shelley's gothics embarrassing because they were so obviously designed for a circulating-library readership. More recent scholarship tries to assuage the embarrassment by claiming that Shelley's gothics are only superficially like other formulaic novels.6 These critics do not appear to have read many circulating-library novels; instead they tend to echo several genera­ tions of their predecessors' critical discourse about Minerva's ephemera. To be sure, Shelley's gothics are uniquely his, but I emphasize that Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne are also indebted to the generic signature of period novels. In 'Defence', Shelley identifies the poet as a nightingale whose prescient song verbalizes what others begin to feel but cannot yet put words to. Minerva's reproductive fiction voices what is already so well known that there is no need for extemporizing. It may seem a far distance between what is already said or known (reproductive writing) and new ways of thinking (the poet as nightingale), but Shelley's idealized portrait of the poet originates with his gothics, where he explores how new visions are engendered by the already said or recycled conventions.

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7

Minerv a 's Continu ed Influence: The Po et as Nightingale in Shelley 's 1 8 1 0 Gothics

In 'A Defence of Poetry' , Shelley portrays the Poet's verse as subject to his inspiration: 'A man cannot say, "I will compose poetry."'l But Shelley shows inspiration to be a product of the Poet's attentiveness to his surroundings and his capacity to push aside stale signifiers to glimpse the truth of things. When inspiration comes, 'A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness, and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.'2 Recent examinations of Shelley's gothics tend to justifY his effort by illuminating the commonalities between them and his mature work. Tilottama Rajan, for example, makes the case that Shelley's gothics 'begin an experiment with the pre-texts and leitmotifs of a revolutionary Romanticism that is replayed in his later poetry as part of a self-conscious resumption of the structural and ideological problems in which the early work is caught'. 3 Stephen Behrendt draws a similar conclusion, noting that ' [Alt every turn, it seems, Shelley confronts his readers in these novels - as he will do in later works upon which his greater fame rests - with the dilemmas faced by characters whose liberty and freedom of choice are . . . constrained.'4 Behrendt is clear that some of Shelley's seemingly characteristic moves in his gothics are also reflective of the genre, one example being 'the unwillingness fully to "resolve" the myriad contradictions - narrative and ideological ­ that make up the gothic universe'.'

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Chapter 7 pushes Behrendt's analysis further by suggesting that Shelley treats popular conventions as social, showing not only that they provide authors with a means of communicating ideas but also that conventions themselves are pre-supplied by shared habits of mind that exert influence upon the author. Shelley, in other words, begins where Godwin leaves off in Things As They Are. Godwin's revised conclusion identifies convention as an important influence on the author-figure, but he distances himself from Caleb by writing an anti-providential novel. Godwin intends to expose less discerning readers than himself to the fact that a hierarchical social order perpetuates itself through human actors. By contrast, Caleb is unable to represent either himself or Falkland accurately when subject to feelings that reflect a providential worldview (Caleb debases himself and eulogizes Falkland). Shelley, for his part, enters the gothic community of readers and writers laterally, as a full member, using sentimental and providential conventions much as Minerva novelists do: at times critically and with some distance but always as borrowed material that delimits and enables revision to a shared social text. This reading requires close attention to the feature of Shelley's gothics that has caused critics the most embarrassment - that they are not even 'first rate'.6 Critics have recently expended much energy to demonstrate that despite being overwrought and deriv­ ative - and, in St. Irvyne's case, apparently unrevised and filled with inconsistencies - the novels are recoverable because they exhibit Shelley's nascent politics and poetics. On the contrary, these novels are important because, rather than in spite, of their borrowed materials, as it is here that we find an early variation of Shelley's nightingale-poet. Shelley's elevation of the Poet is of course indebted to Wordsworth, yet he prefigures a more dynamic (because dialogic) definition of poetry than Wordsworth. Wordsworth's poetics originate with the poet's self-c onstituted habits of mind, but Shelley's, with commonly shared feelings. Shelley's Poet (elevated to arguably even greater heights than Wordsworth) has obscured his debt to a more reproductive and thus feminized model of authorship than genius.

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7:1 Lewis, Dacre, and the 'Masculine' Gothic': Minerva's Continued Influence in its Post-zenith Period In Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, Shelley draws from the 'masculine' gothic tradition, and in particular, Charlotte Dacre's Zojloya (1806), a rewrite of Matthew Lewis's scandalous The Monk (1796) (itself a spin-off of the 'feminine' gothic, as associated with Ann Radcliffe) 7 In addition to mouldering manuscripts, haunted abbeys, etc., period gothics are constituted largely by providential and sentimental conventions. The purpose of what follows is to show that the masculine gothic gains depth and nuance when read in light of Minerva's shared circuit of conventions. Both Lewis and Dacre aim to shock or titillate readers by breaking the expected associa­ tions of a shared convention, a pleasure accessible only to those readers already familiar with how these conventions operate in use. Whereas Minerva novelists, as we have seen, subtly negotiate the competing codes of the sentimental 'I' and the providential 'we', Lewis and Dacre call attention to their incompatibility, a different working relationship to convention that bears some resemblance to 'discernment', in that the author-figure once again appears to rise knowingly above the greater majority.s By contrast, when Shelley takes up the masculine gothic, he negotiates conventions in a typically Minerva mode by illuminating the power that they exert on the author-figure. When Lewis signed his name to the second edition of The Monk, he nearly ruined his career as an MP and only narrowly escaped being tried for obscene libel, making him one ofthe most 'notorious literary figures oflate-eighteenth-century England'. 9 Gamer maintains that 'The Monk's importance - both its contribution and its legacy to gothic's development - lies in the way that reviewers and social conservatives were able to cast it as exemplary of a genre. '10 But, in an important sense, Lewis's novel is exemplary. If The Monk has continued to intrigue new generations of readers, much of the pleas­ ure its intended readers would have experienced arguably stems from Lewis's savvy recycling of Minerva's most popular conventions. Ambrosio, the monk, is exceedingly handsome, intelligent and articulate. He is also an orphan of unknown origin, abandoned at 179

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the age of two outside a monastery and raised by its monks. The Capuchins have taught him to be vain, small-minded and unfeeling, and Lewis makes much the same point as many a Minerva novelist: education makes the man as much as nature, albeit in this case, it creates a villain. Still, Lewis summons the same revelatory language that ordinarily would cast Ambrosio as the hero. One day, Ambrosio, now the abbot ofhis order, speaks to a crowd in Madrid. On hearing him speak, the young and beautiful Antonia finds herself aflutter with a strange, compelling mix of feelings: 'Antonia, whilst she gazed upon him eagerly, felt a pleasure fluttering in her bosom which till then had been unknown to her . . . when at length the Friar spoke, the sound of his voice seemed to penetrate into her very sou1.'" As she reports back to her mother: 'When he spoke, his voice inspired me with such interest, such esteem, I might almost say such affection for him, that I am myself astonished at the acuteness of my feelings' (p. 20). While Antonia's feelings could be interpreted as romantic ardour, she has also just met Lorenzo, a handsome youth to whom she is immediately attracted. Attentive readers will see that Lewis is building on the providential novel's politics of feeling. Antonia's father is nobly born but eloped to the Indies with a shoemaker's daughter, leaving their young son behind at a monastery The enraged paternal grandfather had seized the child, who had later died from neglect. False clues like these abound in Minerva's providential novels, but the hero's or heroine's seem­ ingly inexplicable feelings guide readers to the truth. Antonia's intense but inexplicable feelings for Ambrosio suggest that the child actually survived and that the abbot is her brother. At the same time, Kate Ellis is right, I think, to read Antonia's feelings as erotic,12 a point that gains further resonance when read in light of Minerva's network, for example as Antonia tells Ambrosio: 'The very moment that I beheld you, I felt so pleased, so interested! I waited so eagerly to catch the sound of your voice, and when I heard it, it seemed so sweet! It spoke to me a language till then unknown!' (pp. 261-2). Ambrosio is enraptured: 'Antonia! My charming Antonia! . . . Can I believe my senses? Repeat it to me, my sweet Girl! Tell me again that you love me' (p. 262). Lewis takes providential feeling to its extreme limits, showing the formula's potential for doublespeak. Antonia's intense feelings in this case invite readers to imagine that 180

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this virginal young lady might actually desire her brother. Later, Ambrosio rapes and murders her. Ifwe judge by Minerva's network, in the Minerva novel, a prov­ idential hero or heroine cannot be a villain - the formula will not allow it, though it does permit transgressions that uphold the formula's defining logic that the hero be noble-minded. By contrast, part ofthe masculine gothic's encoded pleasure for intended readers is its shock value. To take another example from The Monk, Matilda, a ravishing young woman who enters Ambrosio's monastery in the guise of a novice, claims to love Ambrosio platonically, as a penitent would God: ' I love you for your virtues: lose them, and with them you lose my affections. I look upon you as a saint' (p. 63). Later, Matilda transforms: ' Oh! since we last conversed together, a dread­ ful veil has been rent from before my eyes. I love you no longer with the devotion which is paid to a saint: I prize you no more for the virtues of your soul; I lust for the enjoyment of your person' (p. 89). Matilda and Ambrosio revel in a short-lived voluptuousness, and Lewis seems to pointedly suggest that Matilda's style of love is exactly the sort that sentimental conventions prettifY and disguise. This suggestion is reaffirmed by Ambrosio's initial feelings for Antonia, which he professes to be as pure and chaste as Matilda had initially portrayed hers for Ambrosio. Readers witness the monk's calm and dignified sentiments transform into a libertine's raging lust. The novel concludes with a providential twist: Matilda is a demon in disguise. Ambrosio is hurled over a precipice by Satan, to whom he has consigned his soul in a deal to avoid the horrors of the Inquisition. In Zojloya; or, the Moor, Charlotte Dacre further advances the masculine gothic's potential to create new and titillating opportu­ nities for intended readers, in this case by recasting the anti-hero as an imperious beauty and her tempter, a Moor. Victoria is a dark, majestic beauty and a 'wild, ardent, and impressible spirit'.13When her mother abandons her husband and children for her seducer, Victoria's stern self-command and capacity to disguise her emotions serve her well, providing a marked contrast to her brother, Leonardo, who is 'unable to resist, in any shape, the first impulses of his heart' (p. 40). Leonardo flees his home in shame. In Venice, he falls under the influence of the beautiful and impassioned Megalina Strozzi, 181

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who drives him to become an assassin. For most of the novel, Leonardo operates at such an intense emotional pitch that he can often hardly be said to think for himself, much like the over-sensible women ofWollstonecraft's Rights of Woman. Victoria proves time and again her capacity to restrain herself and produce the feelings that will best serve her interests. For example, when her mother confines her with a female relation to keep her from a lover, she feigns gentleness and docility, and escapes; she also affects deep love for Berenza, a nobleman who takes an early interest in her, because she feels it is in her interest to do so. Later, on learning he had seen her as worthy ofbeing his mistress but not his wife, though he now longs to marry her, she squelches her rage for a calm c omplacency in order to accept him and await her revenge. Victoria loses her self­ command on meeting her husband's brother, Henriquez, whom she immediately desires. With the assistance of the handsome, tower­ ing and mysterious Moor, Zofloya (a servant ofHenriquez's)Victoria poisons Berenza, imprisoning Henriquez's beloved Lilla, a 'fairy-like' orphan with a mind 'pure, innocent, free even from the smallest taint ofcorrupt thought' (p. 144), in the neighbouring mountains. Zofloya provides Victoria with a drug that will delude Henriquez into imagining Victoria is Lilla. The two share a rapturous night. On awaking and seeing Victoria asleep next to him, Henriquez plunges his dagger into his own heart, after which Victoria, enraged, storms to Lilla's prison and savagely murders her. A third-person narrative voice constantly reminds readers that had Victoria's mother, Laurina, been more dutiful, Victoria's most violent tendencies would have been curtailed. But Laurina falls because she is conventionally feminine or weak. Much as Wollstonecraft describes in Rights, Laurina's 'morality' is not based on principle but rather convention. She is a good wife until tempted, at which point she has no resources on which to draw. By contrast, Victoria prides herself on her independent mind. When Berenza proposes to make her his mistress and not his wife, she presumes he sees her as too lofty-minded to feel the need for culturally sanctioned ties: 'The boldly organized mind, the wild and unrestrained sentiments of Victoria, prevented her from being offended at the proposition ofBerenza' (p. 60). Dacre's portrayals of Victoria and Lilla reflect the gendered distinctions between the beautiful and the sublime that Burke 182

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popularized at mid-century and that Wollstonecraft and other feminist revolutionaries critique in the 1790s. Diane Hoeveler contends that Dacre 'dumbs down' for a wide readership Wollstonecraft's argument in Rights that, in current society, few mothers will be capable of properly educating their children." Beatriz Gonzalez Moreno also treats Rights as an important source text, suggesting that Dacre punishes both Lilla and Victoria for their gendered rather than human identities. is But Dacre borrows as much from critical representations of poetic genius and its dark double, women's reproductive novels, as she does Rights. Indeed, in the first half of the novel,Victorias independence and self-control make her something like Wordsworth's idealized Poet. Victoria is unwilling to bend to others' desires and tastes. Her lofty habits of mind free her to attend to her own desires, which she represents as innate and natura1.!6 But by the second half of the novel, Dacre is clear that Victoria is not free. Love makes her a prisoner, as in many a sentimental novel: Horrible images possessed her brain, and her heart seemed burning with an unquenchable fire. She became even herself astonished, at the violence of the sensations which shook her, and for an instant believed herself under the influence of some superior and unknown power. (p. 145)

As if a nightmare version of the fabled quixotic reader, when Victorias envied self-control dissipates, she falls prey to the Devil in the shape of the Moor.!7 Zofloyas loftiness - of both stature and mind - are in his case literally evidence of a providential order. In a further play on convention,Victoria feels seemingly inexplicably drawn to the Moor despite his race and menial position: ' 'Tis strange, Zofloya! I know not why, but thou soothest me ever and attractest me irresistibly' (p. 199). Dacre seems intent on shocking her readers by implying via the language of sentimental novels that the two become lovers. is Zofloya speaks the language of love: 'say at once, for thou knowest, lovely creature, that we are affianced' (p. 234). Although Victoria's 'heart' resists, 'her soul involuntarily become softened' (p. 234) , and twice she is comforted by Zofloyas embrace. Zofloya is no sentimental hero: in the final scene, he reveals himself 183

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in his true form, hurlingVictoria from a precipice to her death and eternal damnation. Previous scholarship has not fully accounted for Shelley's debt to Zojloya, which is far more extensive than Dacre's to The Monk. Zastrozzi features the same four character types as these two earlier novels: a tempestuous and passionate anti-hero (Matilda) ; the anti­ hero's love object (Verezzi) ; that love object's beloved Oulia) ; and a mysterious figure that helps to orchestrate the protagonist's diab­ olical designs (Zastrozzi). Shelley pares his novel down to Zojloya's constituent events, omitting most of the details of its secondary narrative, which revolves around Leonardo. However, Matilda's love object, Verezzi, is as susceptible as Leonardo to his own emotions. Briefly, the novel opens withVerezzi chained in a cave by Zastrozzi, who for some reason is seeking revenge. Verezzi escapes, with Zastrozzi in pursuit. Seeking shelter,Verezzi happens across beautiful Matilda, intercepting her just as she is about to leap to her death from unrequited love for him.Verezzi, against his better judgement, accompanies Matilda to her home where he stays as a guest. Zastrozzi serendipitously appears. He and Matilda have long plotted to kill Verezzi's beloved, Julia, though readers know that Zastrozzi plays 'a double part'.19 Matilda believes that he aims only to serve her, whereas he has his own scheme (withheld from readers) in mind. Canonical Romantics,Tiljar Mazzeo demonstrates, did not repre­ sent their work as 'original' in the contemporary sense of the word, i.e. self-originating. Rather, in a crowded market, they were aware that they c ould not help but borrow from others. These writers redefine plagiarism, which in the mid-eighteenth century simply meant literal transcription of someone else's writing. Originality is now said to spring from the 'spirit' that the writer brings to another writer's text, with self-origination only later becoming part of the 'Romantic ' legacy, a 'belated critical invention'.20 Plagiarism so redefined meant that writers could justifY copying verbatim as long as they could be said to 'improve ' the original text, which, as Mazzeo explains , meant 'alter[ing] the context' - whether by 'extending the idea, adding new examples . . . or seamlessly inte­ grating the borrowed text into the voice or style of one's own production."! When Shelley draws language practically verbatim from Zojloya, he also 'improves' it by Mazzeo's definition. Dropping 184

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Dacre's emphasis on the supernatural, Shelley calls attention instead to the way that outside influence works on the human mind.

7:2 Shelley's Zastrozz; - an Exercise in Influence There are at least fifteen occasions where Shelley remodels scenes from Zofioya and four times where language is repeated almost verbatim.22 In the first of these instances ,Verezzi responds as scorn­ fully as Henriquez to the anti-heroine's professions of love: 'Oh! wretchedVictoria,' [Henriquez] continued, with a bitter smile, 'and could you attempt to talk of love to the lover of Lilla?' (p. 197)

'Is it for you - is it for Matilda,' continued he, [Verezzi's] countenance asswning a smile of bitterest scorn, 'to talk of love to the lover of Julia?' (p. 85)

Henriquez's antipathy to Victoria is neither mysterious nor unfounded. He is repelled by Victoria's fierce beauty and horrified by her apparent neglect of his beloved brotherVerezzi also similarly contrasts Matilda to his beloved, Julia, though he believes his distaste for the beautiful Matilda (an 'involuntary hatred', p. 86) to be inex­ plicable. In the providential novel, inexplicable feeling always has a source, as readers well know.As I now suggest, while Shelley's 'spirit' appears in his first gothic novel as the independent-minded Zastrozzi, the moments that he draws directly from Dacre suggest that he is as invested in exploring the effects of an inclusive textual network on the author as he is on authorial originality.23 Midway through the novel Zastrozzi lies to Matilda, telling her that Julia is finally dead. When Matilda relays this news to Verezzi, he falls into a prolonged fever and is disconsolate once he recovers. Verezzi is a true sentimental lover, and so his disaffection takes time. Matilda slowly and successfully chips away at his defences by stud­ ying his tastes closely and representing herselfas possessing the same sentiments as he. Eventually the two become lovers. As in Zofioya, 185

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Zastrozzi is the mastermind - he initiates 'plot' (i.e. he tells Matilda that if she braves an assassin's arrow apparently designed forVerezzi, she will win his affections; he then orchestrates just such a scene). More significantly, Zastrozzi exerts influence over Matilda by his Promethean disregard for conventional morals and religion. In his own words, self-control and artful dissimulation enable him to shape his own path: My maxim . . . through life has been, wherever I am , whatever passions shake my inmost soul, at least to appear collected. I generally am; for, by suffering no COillIlo l n events, no fortuitous casualty to disturb me, my soul becomes steeled to more interesting trials. (p. 102)

The soul persists in the hereafter, when one 'by daring boldly, [strives1 to verge from the beaten path' (p. 103). When Matilda pauses, flustered, to ask about religion, Zastrozzi responds: 'I thought thy soul was daring . . . I thought thy mind was towering' (p. 103). From this point onward, Matilda largely manages on her own without Zastrozzi's assistance. She even forgets to tell him that she has removedVerezzi to her castle outsideVenice in hopes that the country air will help him recover. By contrast, once Victoria succumbs to her tumultuous emotions, she relies on Zofloya for every step. On more than one occasion, he appears to foretell her needs, and he appears always when she is longing most to see him, accompanied by hauntingly beautiful music, as if in response to her cries: 'Oh! Zofloya, Zofloya! . . . why art thou not here ' (p. 181).When Shelley's anti-heroine wanders in the forest, she hears strangely beautiful music and calls out: ' Oh, Zastrozzi, Zastrozzi! Would that you were here!' (p. 112). The music comes from a neighbouring convent, and Shelley playfully replaces the growing sense of the uncanny in Zofioya with Matilda's pedestrian decision to write to Zastrozzi and inform him of her whereabouts.Whereas Zofloya's music enchants Victoria, Matilda enchants Verezzi by artfully creating scenes that she hopes will convince him that she shares the same tastes, and thus sentiments, as he. She largely succeeds, though she still waits for him to return her love. Even after Matilda follows Zastrozzi's advice, and guides Verezzi to the spot where she will shield him from the assas­ sin's arrow,Verezzi's providential feeling prevails: 'he felt that within 186

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himself which, in spite of reason - in spite of refle ction - told him that it was impossible' (p. 126). Sentimental convention promises that Verezzi will never love anyone but Julia. Providential logic demands that Verezzi will be unable to assuage his feelings of repulsion when Matilda is near. However, Shelley shows thatVerezzi, being subject to outside influ­ ence, becomes a c onduit for Matilda's artful emotions. Verezzi overhears her professing her love for him just days after the assassin incident, and impulsively interrupts her laments. Matilda has enough self-control to feign feminine modesty and falls to the ground, 'seemingly overcome by shame' (p. 128). He embraces her, not only forgetting Julia in a 'Lethean torpor' (p. 128) but also experiencing love exactly as Matilda does: 'The fire of voluptuous, of maddening love scorched his veins' (p. 128). In Zofioya, Victoria defines the word 'voluntarily' as narrowly as possible. Henriquez is physically willing but he is literally out of his mind: 'Oh, rapture! Oh inex­ pressible bliss! . . . oh, moment for which my heart so long has panted!- shall I then at length be clasped - voluntarily and ardently clasped to the bosom of Henriquez?' (p. 212). Whereas Victoria, like the libertine, will rest content with rape, Shelley defines 'volun­ tarily' more broadly than Dacre so as to explore how one individual gains ascendancy over another: ' Could she succeed in effacing another from his mind, she had no doubt but that he would quickly and voluntarily clasp her to his bosom' (p. 1 1 5). Once Verezzi embraces Matilda and calls her 'wife', they spend a day feasting and in revelry, after which Verezzi echoes Henriquez: Let us retire then, my life, and in gentle dreams we may retrace the pleasures of the day (Zojloya, p. 216): Come I am weary of transport - let us retire and retrace in dreams the pleasures of the day (Zastrozzi, p. 130).

Zastrozzi has guided his actors to his intended denouement. Once the lovers are back in Venice, they see Julia.Verezzi awakes from his torpor to discover that he has broken his vow to his true love. Overwhelmed with misery, he destroys himself In a frenzy of rage, Matilda violently murders Julia. When tried at the Inquisition, 187

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Zastrozzi reveals his motives: vengeance for his mother, who had been seduced and abandoned by Verezzi's father, now long dead. Matilda repents, terrified by the idea of Hell, but Zastrozzi dies on the rack with 'a smile of the most disdainful scorn' (p. 156). Behrendt portrays Zastrozzi as a tragic hero, contending that while 'Zastrozzi is most malicious in his manipulation of others in his pursuit of revenge . . . his physical immensity, which Shelley stresses repeatedly, symbolizes his spiritual immensity.'24 In his deep knowledge of human nature and in his capacity to exercise his influence over other human minds, Zastrozzi resembles Wordsworth's ideal Poet-figure. Yet he is also, as an author-figure of the Minerva mould, exercising his powers to create c onventional plots of the sort described in Wollstonecrail's preface to Wrongs. Verezzi, the sentimental hero, is allowed to be imperfect, falling prey to the artful Matilda. Julia, by contrast, is so perfect as to be apparently 'born immaculate', and her death at the hands of Matilda restores her to Heaven. In Zastrozzi, Shelley aligns himself with period novel readers by displaying his own apparent pleasure in writing novels that would (to use his own words) practically 'mechanically' sell themselves to circulating libraries.25 I use the word 'pleasure' intentionally, to recall its centrality in Wordsworth's 180011802 Preface. In 'blindly and mechanically' obeying his own self-constituted habits of mind,26 the Poet guides intended readers to take pleasure in genuine feeling rather than the sensations of the popular market. In St. Irvyne, Shelley lays the groundwork for a poetics that imagines no necessary contradiction between poetic inspiration and the more 'plebeian' pleasure of formulaic, sensation-driven writing. At the same time, Shelley begins to privilege one particular convention - the poet's elevation - over all others, largely neglecting the feminist invest­ ments that inform the network on which he draws.

7:3 Towards a Romantic Poetics in St. Irvyne The first four chapters of St. Irvyne include three principal charac­ ters, two male (Wolfstein and Ginotti) and one female (Megalena). The basic story line is as follows: 188

Shelley's 1810 Gothics The lofty-mindedWolfstein, an exile from his native land, contem­ plates suicide. Wolfstein impresses some banditti with his fearlessness and joins their troop. The banditti (sans Wolfstein) murder a Count and kidnap his beautiful daughter, Megalena. Their chieftain intends to take her as his bride. Inflamed by love for Megalena, Wolfstein poisons the chieftain. Another bandit, the towering Ginotti, knows that Wolfstein is the murderer, but he convinces the other banditti to exile rather than kill him. Megalena becomes Wolfstein's mistress. His passion for her wanes as she grows corrupted by fashionable society. In a scene reminiscent of Godwin's St. Leon (1799), Wolfstein promises Ginotti that on being summoned, he will listen to his story and bury him when dead. 'When Megalena threatens to leave Wolfstein ifhe does not murder a young woman who has propositioned him, Wolfstein's passion for her is temporarily renewed. Later,Wolfstein despises Megalena for her violent emotions.

Shelley omits chapters 5 and 6. In chapter 7, he introduces Eloise, a sentimental heroine. Eloise has returned home to St Irvyne after an absence of five years. She has both a painful past (retold in the coming chapters) as well as the promise for a new future. Events are: When her mother is dying, Eloise meets the towering Nempere. Despite her dislike of him, he exercises a strange power over her mind. Mter Eloise's mother dies, Nempere seduces and impregnates Eloise. Nempere quickly tires of Eloise and - much as in Wollstonecraft's Wrongs -intends to sell her to a friend to settle a gambling debt. The friend recognizes Eloise's virtue and kills Nempere. Eloise falls in love with Fitzeustice, a poet who intends to raise Nempere's child as his own. They move together to England after marrying, though (echoing Jacobin arguments against marriage) they marry only to appease Fitzeustice's father. 189

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In this second part of the novel, Wolfstein's story also continues, albeit parallel to Eloise's. Ginotti tells Wolfstein about his early atheism and his experiments in natural philosophy. Even the terri­ fYing appearance of Satan in a dream did not deter Ginotti from his research for 'the method by which man might exist for ever'.27 In a final encounter with Ginotti, Wolfstein refuses to renounce God; both Ginotti and Wolfstein die, with Satan claiming Ginotti's soul. Shelley concludes the novel with a brief statement that draws the two narratives together: Ginotti is Nempere. Eloise is the sister of Wolfstein. Let then the memory of these victims to hell and malice live in the remembrance of those who can pity the wanderings of error; let remorse and repentance expiate the offences which arise from the delusion of the passions, and let endless life be sought from Him who alone can give an eternity to happiness. (p. 252)

As is often pointed out, despite Shelley's moralistic closing comments, the Wolfstein and Eloise narratives do not obviously cohere. There are also several inconsistencies, such as Eloise's happy ending (she is introduced in chapter 7 as if at the end of a five-year soj ourn that had ended badly) , the two missing chapters and the fact that NemperelGinotti dies, only to reappear later in the novel. In a Minerva novel, this lack of coherence would be called bad writing. Shelley scholars have made a concerted effort, however, to theorize the inconsistencies, turning St. Irvyne's lack of coherence into a virtue, a sign of Shelley's emergent politics and poetics. Below, I respond to two influential readings. Both begin with the assump­ tion that Shelley mocks or distances himselffrom popular conventions as they operate in use. First, Peter Finch asserts that Shelley chooses to veer from one generic register to another (the masculine gothic and the novel of sensibility) to show the limitations of both, especially in regards to their efficacy for feminist critique: Having pushed such gothic discourse close to the limits of its ideo­ logical coherence, it comes as no surprise therefore to find Shelley's novel suddenly wrenching itself outside its existing plot and 190

Shelley's 1810 Gothics initiating a new line of narrative, one centered not on the problem­ atic of male power but on the rather different subject of female powerlessness.28

Eloise and Fitzeustice exemplifY the idealized love of the sentimental novel, and Finch portrays Ginotti's unremitting presence in the novel as pressuring this ideal. Through this pressure, Shelley main­ tains sight of the 'real' - the way in which individuals are 'c oerced into submission to a "paternal" law'.29 Finch thus reads into St. Irvyne a 'characteristically Shelleyan tension' between idealism and scepticism.30 In contrast to Finch, Tilottama Rajan describes how Shelley exploits an already existent but unconvincing c orrelation between the gothic and sentimental genres: This hurriedly tacked on ending, at which Shelley's publisher Stockdale protested, seems ahnost to parody the facile binding up of loose ends in the overdetennined genre of Gothic romance, which impossibly yokes together violence and abjection with the utopian­ ism of the sentimental novelY

According to Rajan, Zastrozzi relives in St. Irvyne as the 'lofty­ minded' Ginotti, therefore recalling the subversive quality that Shelley had appeared to close down in his first novel. Rajan reads Shelley's gothics as incapable of fully attesting to the 'political unconscious' they evoke, suggesting even so that Shelley's lack of closure exposes the ideology veiled by popular conventions and arguing that these early novels operate similarly to Shelley's later definition of poetry as 'a faculty or mode of thinking rather than a genre'.32 I agree with Finch and Rajan that Ginotti is a Shelleyan 'signature' that anticipates later investments. Ginotti, though, marks Shelley's effort to draw readers back to the formulaic or reproductive novel in order to see the powerful force that shared conventions exert on authors. Shelley does not dismiss this force out of hand, even as he endorses the poetic facilities that help to harness new ways of thinking. Rather, he explores how powerful subtexts influence authorial innovation by summoning expressions that are simulta­ neously original and generic. Shelley writes what is in many ways 191

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a 'generic' novel to speculate, in typical Shelleyan fashion, how the mind works.33 A useful point of comparison is Godwin's Things As They Are (1794) and St. Leon (1799). Like Godwin, Shelley interiorizes gothic-style horror by turning inward, to the human mind as it is shaped by larger society." Only Godwin, however, takes a quintes­ sentially Romantic interest in exploring his subjects' interiority. Wolfstein and Eloise are not rounded characters, and yet their mental processes are central to the novel. Let us begin with the fact that Ginotti's haunting request ofWolfstein echoes St. Leon: Will you promise, that when, destitute and a wanderer, I demand your protection, when I beseech you to listen to the tale which I shall relate, you will listen to me; that, when I am dead, you will bury me, and suffer my soul to rest in the endless slwnber of annihilation? Then will you repay me for the benefits which I have conferred upon you? (186)

When a stranger approaches St Leon with a similar request, Godwin provides numerous details about his protagonist's character, such as his obsession with aristocratic wealth and honour, to demonstrate how vulnerable he is to the stranger's promised gifts (eternal wealth and life). Shelley, by contrast, allows only the barest sketch of Wolfstein's character, providing instead a generic study of what it looks and feels like to be under another individual's influence. In Shelley's first gothic, readers see, step-by-step, how the exemplary Zastrozzi comes to exercise his influence over the conventional Matilda and Verezzi. Shelley drops this scaffolding in St. Irvyne, choosing on two key occasions the word 'mechanical' to describe influence as an external force that the individual experiences internally. 'Mechanical' is, of course, a key word in Wordsworth's Preface. When Shelley shows that seemingly inexplicable influence can be traced back to a social, and thus also gendered, text, he recalls Wordsworth's argument that the Poet must create his own seemingly mechanical habits of mind to transcend the stale associations of print culture. While Wolfstein's first prevailing passion in the novel is for Megalena, Shelley devotes as much space to the odd emotions 192

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Ginotti awakens in Wolfstein as he does to Wolfstein's love affair with Megalena. Ginotti claims to see and know all: 'Let it be suffi­ cient for you to know, that every event in your life has not only been known to me, but has occurred under my particular machi­ nations' (p. 224). This speech act shapes Wolfstein's mind and his destiny: 'His soul shrunk within him at the idea of his own littleness, when a fellow-mortal might be able to gain so strong, though sightless, an empire over him. He felt that he was no longer inde­ pendent' (p. 195). The all-knowing Ginotti's effect on Wolfstein may recall Things As They Are. Whereas Godwin delineates the habits of mind and social structures that enable Falkland's hold over Caleb, however, Shelley provides no rationale for Ginotti's actions, mystifYing them entirely. Wolfstein cannot help but 'mechanically' follow Ginotti's wishes: 'Yes, yes, I have promised, and I will perform the covenant I have entered into,' said Wolfstein; 'I swear to you that I will!' and as he spoke, a kind of mechanical and inspired feeling steeled his soul to fortitude; it seemed to arise independently of himself; nor could he, though he eagerly desired to do so, control in the least his own resolves.

(p. 223) In his portrait of Eloise, Shelley again emphasizes the word 'mechanical': Still, though deeply grieved at the approaching death of her mother, was the mysterious stranger uppermost in her thoughts; his image excited ideas painful and unpleasant. She wished to turn the tide of them; but the more she attempted it, with the more painful recurrence of almost mechanical force, did his recollection press upon her disturbed intellect. (p. 215)

Wordsworth's idealized Poet of the Preface 'blindly and mechani­ cally" obeys' his feelings, but his feelings are self-constituted." His obedience is in an important sense self-manufactured. By contrast, in St. Irvyne, 'mechanical' actions are unbidden, refle cting the power of conventional narratives over human actors. Both gothic hero (Wolfstein) and sentimental heroine (Eloise) find unbidden feelings 193

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'mechanically' propelling them forward. These moments echo each other and are designed to draw readers into reflecting on the inter­ relationship between Wolfstein's and Eloise's respective dramas. The male acts while the female is acted upon; both, however, obey an outside influence.Wolfstein is terrified by Ginotti but also intrigued, and he wilfully enters into a gothic-style drama by promising to meet Ginotti's demands when required. Eloise becomes Nempere's mistress despite her immediate dislike of him. Like Zastrozzi, Ginotti's towering, majestic body matches his spirit, and he succeeds in shaping the feelings and decisions of his victims. Rather than allow Ginotti's behaviour to predict Eloise's fate, though, Shelley shows that Fitzeustice, a poetic hero of sensi­ bility, is able to look past Eloise's affair with Nempere. Eloise remains unspoiled because she never grants her soul to Nempere, and Fitzeustice accepts the seducer's child as his own. In treating formulaic novels as a site for reworking commonplaces about 'fa11en' women, Shelley connects with a tradition dating back to Lane's early publications in the mid- to late 1780s. When Minerva's sentimental authors envisage perfect lovers, they challenge the sexual double standard and confining definitions ofwoman's virtue. Shelley's poetics, if defined as 'a faculty or mode of thinking rather than a genre ' , are anticipated by his gothics, as Rajan argues.36 But Rajan contrasts what she calls Romantic narrative (of which she suggests Shelley's gothics are a prime example) with most nineteenth-century novels, which she describes as 'disciplinary' in nature.37To the contrary, I argue that by taking stock of the formu­ laic novels that do not even make it into this ' disciplinary' canon - and which are often said to reproduce the status quo - we find that Shelley writes a poetics of reproductive fiction. In using popular conventions to discern socio-political problems and to provide novel solutions, he shows that reproductive novels create opportunities to add to a shared social text, if, that is, the author is sensitive to the ways that this text operates in use. And yet, while Shelley advances the feminist potential of period novels, he also perpetuates misogyny. St. Irvyne is a more insistently feminist novel than Zastrozzi, yet it is also surprisingly unimaginative in its portraits of female subjectivity, beginning with the point that while Shelley appears to borrow directly from Wollstonecraft's Wrongs 194

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by having Nempere sell Eloise to a friend to pay off a gambling debt, his emphasis is on the friend's recognition of Eloise's virtue and his subsequent rescue ofher.Wollstonecraft's Maria, by contrast, rescues herself. Eloise, lovely, mild, susceptible, is essentially identical to the Megalena with whom Wolfstein initially falls in love. Even so, in a passage recalling Wrongs, a narrative voice suggests that Wolfstein will not continue to love her - and, indeed, that he never did: The love with which Wolfstein regarded Megalena notwithstanding the strength of his expressions, though fervent and excessive at first, was not of that nature which was likely to remain throughout exist­ ence; it was like the blare of the meteor at midnight, which blazes amid the darkness for awhilst, and then expires; yet did he love her now; at least ifheated achniration of her person and accomplishments, independently of mind, be love. (p. 189)

Whereas Wollstonecraft's sympathies lie with her forsaken heroine, Shelley's are with Wolfstein: Megalena too, the beautiful, the adored Megalena, was no longer what she formerly was, the innocent girl hanging on his support, and depending wholly upon him for defence and protection; no longer, with mild and love-beaming eyes, she regarded the haughty Wolfstein as a superior being, whose look or slightest word was sufficient to decide her on any disputed point. No, dissipated pleas­ ures had changed the fonner mild and innocent Megalena. (p. 196)

Shelley mimics Dacre's portrait ofhelpless femininity. IfWollstone­ craft were the author we could presume irony - after a11, this is a narrative aside. Shelley may recognize the potential for irony, but he only furthers commonplace notions about female virtue by again borrowing directly from Zojloya. Megalena is swiftly converted into a Megalina Strozzi - the strumpet who corrupts the susceptible Leonardo. In the novel's last chapter, Wolfstein stumbles upon Megalena's corpse. Horrified, 'Wolfstein dashed the body convul­ sively on the earth, and, wildered by the suscitated energies of his soul almost to madness, rushed into the vaults ' (p. 251). Perhaps it 195

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is his freedom from this femme fatale that liberates Wolfstein from Ginotti's influence. In the final scene, Wolfstein declares his inde­ pendence, refusing to disclaim God and sending Ginotti to Hell. Gamer identifies the contingency ofRomantic ideology, showing it not to be an accident, per se, but rather a potentiality in the period that could have solidified differently, say ifthe 1798 volume of Lyrical Ballads had been reviewed more favourably.3s I have examined a different type of potentiality in Shelley's gothics, one that resurfaces in 'Defence' when Shelley writes a poetics that requires the poet's deeply sympathetic connections with his age. Shelley's Poet is as elevated as Wordsworth's, but his image of poetic inspiration could not be more different. Wordsworth's Poet fashions his own habits of mind so that they respond to genuine rather than sensationalized feeling. Later, the composing process happens in tranquillity and by choice. By contrast, Shelley contradicts what Wordsworth takes great pains to demonstrate- that writing IX'etry is hard work as it requires the Poet's careful construction of poetic habits of mind: A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it: for the mind in creation is as a fading coal which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to a transitory brightness.3 9

While the verse of Shelley's 'Defence' comes to the Poet, like 'lightning' , unbidden,40 it is ultimately as explicable asWordsworth's, deriving from a shared feeling. The Poet, through 'reoccurrence of the poetical power', comes to have his powers of mind shaped. His mind becomes more orderly and harmonious as he tunes into the vibrations of other minds:41 The pleasure resulting from the manner in which they express the influence of society or nature upon their own minds, cOillIll unicates its el f to others, and gathers a sort of reduplicationfrom that cOillIll llllity. Their language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it matk s the before unapprehended relations of things, and perpetuates their apprehension.42

Shelley theorizes what Raymond Williams would much later call 'a structure offeeling'.43 The Poet apprehends relations among nature, 196

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wider society and the human mind, and then articulates these rela­ tions in a new way that resonates with others who re-articulate them themselves. This is particularly true in an age of revolution. Even poets who do not realize they are 'heralds' of a new age find themselves doing that age a service. They are not free agents. As William Godwin might put it, they are compelled by 'necessity': Even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve, the Power which is seated on the throne of their own soul . . . They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are them­ selves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations, for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. 44

This chapter has illustrated that we find an early version of Shelley's 'spirit of the age' in his gothic novels. In his work with popular conventions, Shelley engages with two competing and yet concur­ rent constructions of Romantic habits of mind, the gothic and the poetic. For Romantic-era critics, gothic conventions denoted a market-driven economy of readers and writers. As is often noted, this economy was feminized, with novel production portrayed as a reproductive form, and the novelist 'herself' as haplessly repro­ ducing the same conventions that she reads.45 Shelley contests this view in his gothics when treating popular conventions themselves as an ideal vehicle to challenge stale ideas and to say something new. At the same time Shelley falls victim to stale ideas, and, in his case, in the service of revolutionary feminist politics. As we saw earlier, while Caroline in Eliza Fenwick's Secresy does not treat Sibella's love affair with Clement and subsequent pregnancy as an insurmountable barrier to marrying Murden, Murden does - and this belief sends him to his grave. Fitzeustice's vision may exceed Murden's, though Shelley's own feminist vision falters in his misog­ ynistic portrait of Megalena. Shelley is more adept at navigating some conventions than others. Specifically, the saviour of the novel, Fitzeustice, overshadows Eloise, who functions primarily as a means to exalt the Poet. Both Wordsworth and Shelley are responsive to the popular novel market, the difference being that Wordsworth elevates himself above 197

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the gothic economy and Shelley assumes that he is a part of it. When, in 'Defence', Shelley represents the poetic process as an unbidden force that seizes the Poet unawares, he advances the social model for authorship that derives from Minerva's larger network of novels. Yet Shelley replaces the Minerva novelist's continued recycling of reproductive or formulaic conventions with the Poet's unique capacity to draw new associations. That is to say, while Shelley advances Minerva's collective authorial model, he also simultaneously lays the groundwork for a poetics that effaces that model from literary history. Chapter 8 traces a concurrent development in Minerva's late novels. In this case, however, novelists hijack the poet-figure for a poetics of reproductive fiction that reaches its apotheosis in the 1810s when prolific novelists endorse gothic habits of mind, or attentiveness to the shared conventions that shape authorial inven­ tion. While these authors generally avoid the most shocking and titillating elements of the so-called 'masculine' gothic,46 they recall its playful flamboyance in self-conscious generic hybrids that illuminate the way in which popular conventions shape and are shaped by Minerva's larger network.

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8

Reinstating Rom antic Fantasy in Minerv a 's 'L ate' Novels: Rom anticism and 'Gothic' Habits of Mind

He dreamed a veiled maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. Her voice was like the voice of his own soul, Heard in the cahn of thought. 1 (percy Shelley, Alastor, 1816)

Indeed I did not suppose that any young man, who had been educated as you were, could have been so romantic as to love a woman for years, who probably did not remember above a single hour that such a person as you existed.2 (Jane Harvey, Warkfold Castle, 1802)

Shelley's 1816 poem, Alastor, features a young poet who lives alone in nature. One night he envisages a beautiful young poetess, whose soul reflects his own. He embraces her, and following a euphoric moment of shared contact, feels her evaporate in his arms. Alastor cannot forget his vision, an ideal that drives him to suicidal despair, and the poem concludes with the Poet's solitary death. If critics disagree whether or not Shelley intends to laud or critique Alastor, they treat the Poet's feelings as a manifestation of a superior mind.3 Wordsworth's poetics are an obvious source

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text,' making Alastor an appropriate starting point for this chapter because of what it suggests about Romantic 'anxiety' in the late 1810s, when Minerva no longer dominates the market. By 1816, the sentimental novel proper had long been unfashionable. Shelley helps redesign sensibility for poetic vision, elevating a genre that contemporary critics associated with feminine or reproductive writing. For second-generation Romantics, the Poet-figure has become the new 'man of feeling', and Alastor exemplifies (inten­ tionally or not) what Anne Mellor describes as the Romantic appropriation of a female literary tradition.5 This appropriation did not go unnoticed by female writers, especially those writing in the reproductive mode. In fact, it is no coincidence that Minerva novelists return with gusto to sentimental love in the l800s and l8l0s in order to emphasize the sentimental lover's powers of imagination. That the sentimental novel is now connected to both formulaic conventions and new associations makes it a prime vehicle to revalue formulaic writing itself By Minerva's late period, novelists have access to more than a generation's worth of popular conventions, some of which endorse c ompeting and even c ontradictory values , e.g. the senti­ mental ' I ' and the providential 'we'; a ladylike signature and the ethos of genius. These incompatibilities across the network inspire a notably meta-discursive turn by providing authors with points of comparison as to how c onventions both delimit and enable invention. Chapter 8 illustrates that novelists treat Minerva's networked conventions as heuristics for familiar mindsets and feelings and, in turn, as opportunities to revise convention in the service of new visions. Whereas Wordsworth suggests that the Poet's vision frees him to pursue new visions, Minerva novelists treat poetic sensibility like other conventions: as a site to be negotiated. As such, they begin to formulate a working definition of authorship that presupposes invention as originating from shared habits of mind - what we might call a poetics of repro­ ductive fiction. Once again, a meta-discursive turn is enabled by literary hand­ me-downs, in this case, the critics' conflation of Minerva with a gothic economy of readers and writers. This point bears on my earlier claim that in the later 18005 and 1810s, the Press's continued 200

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influence is best measured by prolific novelists of two types: those who published with Minerva in its zenith or earlier; also, new novelists who publish primarily or exclusively with the Press. First, we will see how three prolific Minerva novelists appropriate poetic genius and its double, the reproductive novel, to explore the role that convention plays in shaping new visions. I then focus on one rather extraordinary anonymous novel, The Woman of Colour (1808), to make the case that its specially unique element, the author's critique of racial politics, derives from the author's c ontribution to this co-authored poetics. In both cases, Alastor is an important point of comparison, since the same popular conventions that Shelley probed in his gothics now appear in the service of the inward, lyrical turn from the market that until recently has been seen as characteristic of canonical Romanticism.6

8:1 Writing the Poetics of Popular Fiction, I: The Poet and Minerva's 'Romantic' Novels By the time Amelia Beauclerc published Husband Hunters!!! (1816), she was a well-seasoned novelist, having already published six novels in the 1810s, four with Minerva. The novel's title applies only to the eldest of three sisters, Dorothea, a scrawny spinster offorty who throws herself in the way of any potential suitor, much to the embarrassment of her two beautiful and much younger half-sisters, Louisa and Emily. Through Dorothea, Beauclerc introduces a ribald, almost burlesque tone, but she invokes the full earnestness of the sentimental novel in her characterization of Emily, the youngest daughter, who adopts an orphan. By the end of the first volume, readers learn that Emily is actually married and that the adopted child is her own. Emily is the quintessential sentimental heroine; the middle sister, Louisa, by contrast, possesses romantic sensibility and, as such, appears to be modelled after Radcliffe's poetical heroines. And yet, Louisa writes novels - and, more specifically, sentimental novels. Her current manuscript, titled Cleomene, or Fortitude and Sensibility, is testament to the criticism waged by novelists and critics against sensibility. The sentimental novel, now out of fashion, resurfaces 201

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in Romantic poetics. Marking this exchange, Louisa's self-reflection denotes poetic habits of mind: My first effort of literature caused me to think, and analyse the affections of the mind - to encourage all impulses that add dignity to nature and that evince 'the spark divine' within us. Delighted with such inquiry; I found my ideas expand in the research; they made me better, if not wiser. (4: 166-7)

Despite her poetic sensibility, Louisa follows convention for 'lady' authorship. She publishes anonymously and keeps her writing private, not even mentioning it to a new suitor, Sir Lucius, with whom she is falling in love. Louisa's authorship becomes central to the narrative action when Lucius disc overs her manuscript on her desk. Curious, he reads the page before him and then, flipping back to the title page, is appalled to disc over that his beloved is a novelist, whose work he regards as silly impediments to wifely duties. Torn, he departs for the Isle of Baas without informing either Louisa or his family, in the hope that he will be able to settle on a decided plan of action. En route, he overhears a gentle­ man reiterate his own point of view: novels are silly, especially now that any milliner or lady's maid writes them. Their ship captures a French frigate and offers a middle-aged c ountess protection. Lucius admires this lady and is shocked to discover she is a prolific novelist (she took up writing after being separated from her husband, who had gone missing while fighting for the royalist cause).7 Lucius recognizes the irony that the two women he respects most, the countess and Louisa, are both authors. Still he cannot reconcile his feelings with his prejudice, for which he adopts the vitriol of contemporary critics: 'It lowers a woman in my opinion when she descends to far as to write trash' (2: 225). By having the c ountess give a reading to the bored sailors, Beauclerc defends novels via an ironic restaging of critical discourse. Lucius is entranced by the countess's novel and begs to borrow it overnight. The countess acquiesces, but not without first positioning Lucius in the traditionally 'feminine' role of uninformed reader: 'in the future . . . throw aside prejudice, depend on your own judgment, nor let the fashion of the day on any one 202

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subject, lead you to decide unfavourably on what you are yourself ignorant of' (2: 229). In the meantime, during Lucius's absence, the heartbroken Louisa pledges to devote the rest of her life to Emily and her daughter. Once Lucius returns home, entirely reformed on the question of novels and female authorship, Louisa refuses to see him. Emily accuses her sister of quixotic tendencies, begging her not to mistake sentimental ideals for real life. Louisa valorizes her own feelings, which as discussed above, reflect her own self-constituted habits of mind: l owe . . . the best feelings of my heart to that romance you choose to ridicule. I was once a common, every-day character; till I commenced author, I was a vain, inconsiderate giddy creature; myselfwas my first object on all occasions . . . If an elevated mind, and a careless regard ofmy own sufferings, seem romantic, I submit to the term. (4: 166-7)

When Louisa's ideal lover fades away, she suffers the sentimental decline. In Alastor, the poet's vision marks his premature death, but in Husband Hunters!!!, the visionary survives-apparently as a concession to the genre and gender constraints of the popular market. Louisa, once the elevated poet-figure, is now the quixotic female reader of critical discourse-i.e. in need of a guide. Her reformation begins when two coachmen seize her late one evening: she soon recognizes Lucius, who has plotted to get her to a church where, if she is willing, she will marry him. Louisa writes to Emily, saying that her present work has ended happily with marriage. Beauclerc states that Louisa gives up authorship for marriage, which ' outrivaled the witching charms felt by an "author'" (4: 229), but she reserves her final words for a more personal signature: 'thus, gentle reader, having made every body happy, allow me to remain with respect and consideration, indefatigably and perseveringly AN AUTHOR' (4: 229-30). By stressing that Louisa is now blushing and silent, preferring her husband's words to her own (see 4: 192 and 229), Beauclerc attests to the significance of c onvention - and in particular, feminine convention - all the while laughingly seeming to suggest, through a bold authorial aside, that conventions can be negotiated and creatively repurposed. 203

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By contrast, in her use of genius, Jane Harvey reads as a more reluctant Minerva author. While Harvey debuts with Minerva in 1802, her second novel with the Press, Auberry Stanhope (1814) is a reprint, having been originally published in 1812 by Longman as Memoirs of an Author.8 This novel can be read as a lament about the talented woman author's thwarted opportunities in the current market. The most substantial evidence for this reading is provided early on, via Harvey's characterization of Mrs Stanhope, an unmar­ ried woman in her fifties. Mrs Stanhope is the female exemplar - kind, warm-hearted and devoted to her nephew,Auberry, whom she has raised from early childhood. She is also an impassioned aspiring author who has invested the past twenty years in writing a history on the life of ' Zing is Khan'. Stanhope grew up with this project 'like a twin brother', sharing with it his aunt's attention: 'nor even at this period was it possible to ascertain whether himself or the manuscript was the chief object of her solicitude; or whether affec­ tion for him, or a passion for authorship, was the governing principle of her mind.'9 This observation is later reiterated by Mrs Stanhope herself, in a letter that she leaves for Stanhope to discover after her death: 'A literary reputation is the most glorious of earthly distinc­ tions; let it, then, be the first object ofyour ambition . . . the sublime and transcendent gift of genius is the boon of Heaven itself' (1: 219). To pause for a moment, we can imagine that such a project, esoteric and ambitious, by such a woman - older, unmarried and thirsting for 'literary eminence' (1: 25) - could easily be an object of ridicule. However, Harvey treats Mrs Stanhope with both respect and sympathy: Such an undertaking in a female, who, though gifted with high mental powers, a reflective mind, a sound judgment, and a lively imagination, had yet few external aids to support her; for she spoke only two languages, was destitute of the advantages of a classical education, and had neither coadjutors nor correspondents to assist her. (1: 21)

Stanhope admires his aunt and reverences her work. He also inherits her passion for authorship, though he aspires to be a poet: 'Long since had the ductile and enthusiastic soul of her pupil imbibed 204

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the same ardent thirst for literary eminence; the name of Author was enshrined in his heart, as the most glorious of earthly titles' (1: 23). After his aunt dies, Stanhope goes to London in the hope of earning literary acclaim. Mr Honeywood, a professional writer ofimpeccable virtue and talent, befriends him, serving as a mentor. Honeywood describes the talented writer as subject to others' envy and contends that to be successful requires independence of mind: Rely on the powers of your mind; let your fortitude be unshaken, and your diligence and perseverance unwearied, and you will even­ tually succeed in obtaining from the public the mead of applause due to your talents, without bowing the knee to any great man or arrogant dowager. (2: 47-8)

Over the course of the narrative, Stanhope attempts several genres (a history, essays , political writing, poetry, even a novel) and even­ tually begins writing articles for a periodica1. After much hard work and numerous setbacks, he succeeds: The time was now arrived when his transcendent genius was destined to break through every obstacle, and shine with all its native lustre; the reception the poems met from the public was ardent and enthu­ siastic; and despite of the snarling envy of hireling critics, and the sneers of disappointed booksellers, three editions were rapidly sold; his society was now courted by men of genius and learning. (2: 219)

The poetic genius who transcends the sordid marketplace is a quintessentially Romantic image. 10 Stanhope's success can be read as a female author's fantasy of freedom, especially a circulating­ library novelist's. Harvey's use of popular c onventions suggests, however, that there is a certain freedom within constraint. The novel, set in a small Northumberland village, opens with Mrs Camilla Stanhope pacing her cottage as she awaits her nephew's return from Cambridge on the death of their friend, a clergyman who had financed his studies. Not long after his return, Stanhope rescues the new rector's daughter (notably named Julia) when the collapsing abbey rooftraps her in her mom. Once safe on the ground, Stanhope and Julia are immediately love-struck. Stanhope's relative 205

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poverty, paired with the fact that Julia's father, Dr Ingleby, has long intended his daughter for her noble cousin, Lord Millinghurst, sets the conditions for providential drama. When Julia's brother (who admires Stanhope for both his poetic gifts and his character) suggests that Dr Ingleby finance the remainder of Stanhope's education as a reward for his bravery, the latter is scornful, suggesting that Stanhope would be better off with an apprenticeship in a trade: The boy has got a set of absurd, romantic notions into his head about going to the university, and taking orders; a simple fellow! He would lounge away the best years of his youth at Cambridge, and then drag on the remainder of existence on a curacy of seventy or eighty pOllllds a year. (1: 183)

Stanhope never does return to Cambridge. He is not a commoner­ to-nobleman (he is never uncertain of his parentage) , though his innate talents and orphan status invoke the popular formula. Indeed, while Stanhope's talents eventually earn him fame and fortune, the novel concludes with his reinstatement within the paternal branch of his family, at which point Dr Ingleby happily accepts him and his wealth for his daughter. Much as Shelley in Alastor, Harvey shows that 'genius' is compat­ ible with, and indeed possibly a prerequisite for, intense romantic passion. After Stanhope rescues Julia, he awakes with her in his mind, 'yielding up [to her fascinating impression] his whole soul' (1: 67). In this case, however, the ardent poet struggles with his feelings: 'He was well aware that the stern duties he owed himself, demanded that he should make a vigorous effort to tear the image ofJulia from his heart' (1: 84). Stanhope's struggle recalls the mixed signals of the providential novel, where the commoner-to-noble­ man hero acts correctly by acquiescing in the logic of the social order, even while inadvertently displaying his feelings to his lover. Julia can only respond, ' fate denies us the power of directing our own destiny' (1: 193): Stanhope, despite his 'wild and agitated feelings' , complies, but not before exacting his own promise: ' I will obey you; never again shall one sign, one accent of my sufferings, meet your ear;- but do not bid me cease to love you:- to the last hour of my existence' (1: 198). As in St. Irvyne, the male poet is 206

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eulogized at the expense of his romantic ideal, who appears as the feminine ideal, and thereby uncomfortably like the silent beauty, Lilla of Dacre's Zojloya. Though Julia secretly resists her father's imperious demands by allowing Stanhope a c ontinued reign in her heart, she ultimately complies with his wishes, thus more closely reflecting the feminine conventions that many other Minerva novelists successfully retract. Through the twists of a dramatic plot, Julia had actually stood at the altar with her cousin, when a young foreigner had thrown herself before them to proclaim herself Lord Millinghurst's wife - though as it turns out, not by British law. Julia's brother reminds her but that for this serendipitous interruption of the wedding vows, she would be legally married to a man she despises, the implication being that conventionally feminine obedience and passivity is hardly noble. Convention, Harvey demonstrates, may be undermined from within, a position that differs notably from Stanhope's mentor, Honeywood,judging by advice he gives to Stanhope, now an aspir­ ing novelist: 'Honeywood, when [Stanhope] first mentioned this design, laughed and said "it is a hackneyed and beaten track, Stanhope; it will scarcely be possible to keep originality in view, neither which if it were practicable would originality be relished'" (2: 105). When Honeywood presumes that the true author is ' original', he adopts what was fast becoming a commonplace; the artist or writer's most powerful resource is his own powers of mind (as Wordsworth states in 1815, 'genius is the introduction of a new element into the intellectual universe'"). He implies that Stanhope's talents are wasted on the novel, as readers do not care for originality, hungering after endless reiterations. Honeywood then supplies Stanhope with a detailed list of instructions: In the first species, it will be indisputably requisite that you should introduce a masquerade, in which a mysterious figure wrapped in a long white cloak must haunt your hero or heroine like their shadow, and after whispering some portentous warning in their ear, vanish without being seen by any other person . . . if you choose the more sublime region of Romance, it will be proper to conduct your hero­ ine, with a lamp in her hand, down a tottering staircase, and through 207

Gothic Habits of Mind a range of damp vaults, to a chapel, where the fonn of her mother, habited in white, is kneeling before an altar; and above all, do not fail to repeat the words Inexplicable Mysteries at least ten times in every page! (2: 105-6)

Stanhope follows Honeywood's advice, only to find his novel turned down as too much like all the others: 'really we are at present so full of works of this description that I must beg leave to decline it' (2: 106). A second publisher rejects the novel on the grounds that 'we make it a rule never to publish novels, unless to oblige some particular friend' (2: 106). A third and fourth publisher echo the same. Dispirited, Stanhope sets his novel aside. Late Minerva novelists adapt critical discourse about women's reproductive novels, drawing on the by now shopworn convention that their novels are 'trash'. In Chapter 1 , I suggested that this convention is a variation on the quixotic female reader, who recreates the drama of her novels in real life (in the gothic economy, the novel reader turns writer, stamping out more of the same predictable novels). That chapter featured two novels that showcase a female author's efforts to publish a novel. In each case, the novelist is turned down several times before having her novel accepted by a benevolent publisher. I used these novels to chart two distinct moments in Minerva's thirty-year reign: first, Lane's efforts to influence the novel market in the late 1780s, and, second, novelists' investment in Minerva at its zenith period. Harvey's author-figure is male and writes only one novel, but Harvey's emphasis on his repeated efforts to publish echoes these earlier novels, in this case marking Minerva in its decline. And yet, Stanhope's brief experi­ ment with novels suggests that, while Honeywood may be an admirable character in his own right, as an exemplary model for Stanhope he has a blind spot. His familiarity with novels is that of a critic, not an author. Janet Giltrow describes how 'meta-genres naturalize genres' by 'rationalizing and representing' them to the writers who use them.12 As Stanhope's failure to publish suggests, critics are not in fact attuned to what the market actually wants, as channelled by publishers' instincts. Indeed, their reviews function to represent critics as discerning authors who stand outside the gothic economy. 208

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While Harvey authorizes a reproductive mode of writing by calling attention to its nuance, or the way conventions operate in use, we cannot deny the power that she allots to 'genius'. Harvey's portrait of Mrs Stanhope suggests that she is a reluctant Minerva author, driven to popular conventions because of market pressures, including gendered notions of authorship. We know to be wary of conflating an author's writing with her personal life, yet it is worth remembering that critics (from the Romantic era to today) often read Wordsworth's and Shelley's idealized Poet figures as stand-ins for themselves. Mrs Stanhope writes her studious history in private, ultimately passing it off to her nephew to finish and publish, only for Stanhope to discover that the bookseller to whom he finally sells claims to be the author. Stanhope also struggles to publish and faces multiple injustices, including scornful assessment of his work. And yet he ultimately achieves the shared fantasy among Romantic authors: literary acclaim. One of Harvey's final points in the novel is that Stanhope plans to republish Mrs Stanhope's manuscript, properly attributing it to her as author. Because Harvey selects a male protagonist for her novel, she can realize a fantasy that, if her portrait of Mrs Stanhope is any guide, she wishes all talented female authors could realize. Selina Davenport's The Hypocrite; or the Modern Janus (1814) also juxtaposes the fantasy of high literary acclaim with a sordid view of the indignities and injustices of a working life. In this case, however, Davenport reserves all indignities for two women, sisters who work practically day and night at needlework in their efforts to survive.13 One of the sisters is married to the novel's 'hypocrite', the poet Leopold Courtney. Courtney's envy of his acclaimed fellow poet Edmund Dudley precipitates a providential plot. Much of the novel is set sixteen years after Courtney betrays Dudley by informing his patron, Lord Mortimer, that Dudley, an orphan of unknown lineage, has married Mortimer's daughter Althea. Enraged, Mortimer imprisons Althea in a tower, where she gives birth to a stillborn child. Althea dies shortly afterwards, upon which Dudley vows to remain forever constant to her memory. Much like Alastor, disappointed love leads Dudley to a solitary life, living solely to complete a yearly pilgrimage to Althea's tomb. In the meantime, the consummate hypocrite has ensconced himself 209

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as tutor to Lord Mortimer's nephew Edwin. Dudley's child, who (of course) was not actually stillborn, is raised in comfortable gentil­ ity as Ellen Woodville. In the present moment of the novel, Ellen's beauty attracts Edwin as well as a crew of young nobles who are visiting Mortimer's castle, and she is invited for a prolonged visit. Readers are invited to partake in Ellen's pleasure through witnessing such scenes as Ellen and Edwin gathering nuts in the verdant splendour surrounding the castle. When Ellen tastes the nuts Edwin cracks for her, she 'thought them the sweetest she had ever tasted, although it was only the shell that had touched his mouth'. 14 Ellen and Edwin's love for each other would play out as a conventional providential drama were it not for Courtney's interference. Having discovered Ellen's true identity, Courtney counsels Edwin to seduce her, reminding him that Mortimer would never allow him to marry a commoner. Davenport uses the saleability of'genius' to redirect readers' attention from the heroine's unfolding romantic fantasy to Courtney's wife Sybella and her sister Maria, unromantic figures who nevertheless become subjects in their own right and benefi­ ciaries of a new style of romantic fantasy. Dudley makes the typical discovery for orphans of unknown origins (he is well connected by birth), but in the 1810s, poetic genius can displace noble birth, as here: It is the consciousness of superior genius, of talent which NOBILITY cannot purchase, of an uncorrupted heart, a free and independent mind, a soul and spirit that would not stoop to solicit a favour, or pay homage to the mere title of any man, that has gained me the love of Althea. (1: 20)

Dudley has a double, the handsome Duke ofFitz-Aubin: Mortimer had long intended his daughter to marry the duke, and Fitz-Aubin falls in love with her on first sight. As he later tells Dudley, on sensing Althea's indifference to him,'I voluntarily resigned (ignorant as I then was of her marriage) my just pretensions to the glory of calling her mine' (2: 3). The duke 's 'godlike generosity' pushes the outer limits of poetic sensibility, adding a touch of absurdity to the narrative, as like Dudley, Fitz-Aubin abandons the duties and privileges of his station on Althea's death: 210

Minerva's 'Late' Novels In this awful moment, and in the belief that thou art permitted to witness our present sufferings, hear me declare that it shall be the study of my life to fulfill thy last request - that the happiness of thy Edmund shall ever be my first consideration - and that, like him, I swear never to violate the sanctity and purity of my attachment by wedding another! (2: 175)

Both men remain true to their vow, glorying in their vows of chastity. But Davenport claims to have written a novel, not a romance. Even as events at the castle unfold in the fairy-tale world of romantic fantasy, the London that Maria and Sybella occupy is contemporary and ordinary, and their story continuously interrupts the main narrative. Courtney has left his wife and family destitute, and there is no doubt that readers are meant to disdain him for it. On becoming Edwin's tutor, Courtney spends his large income primarily on himself and a mistress, leaving his wife, Sybella, and her sister deeply in debt. Twice they are forced to move to increas­ ingly squalid apartments, and one of Sybella's children dies of measles. Readers see that the sisters' health suffers from their endless labour at needlework and that they cannot properly provide for Sybella's two remaining children. Davenport also showcases the sisters' compassion on meeting a young woman driven to prosti­ tution after Courtney seduces and abandons her. The two women adopt Susan as their 'sister-in-aflli ction' (3: 83), and the three live and work together in the same crowded apartment. The novel concludes happily for all three women. Belying convention about the fate of the 'ruined' woman, Susan marries her former lover, and the pair returns home where Susan reunites with her family. Another fantasy is quietly realized when Dudley (who over the course of the novel frequently visits the sisters, supplying them with neces­ sities) gives the sisters the funds to open a millinery in the country. Popular conventions, including poetic sensibility, can be used to entertain and to draw readers into a shared fantasy, Davenport's novel suggests.They can also be used for social critique, in this case to expose the gendered inequities (both private and professional) that devalue women's labour. By tainting the typical Minerva fantasy with incestuous undertones, Davenport is perhaps encouraging readers to identifY with the 'sisters in affliction' rather than the 211

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conventional heroine. After Edwin proves weak-minded enough to follow Courtney's advice, Ellen ultimately marries a young man whom she has always believed to be her brother. While Davenport partially clues readers to this possibility (Ellen has long thought Theodore the pinnacle of male excellence), readers witness Ellen cavorting with Edwin, not Theodore. Until the c onclusion, Davenport sustains the possibility that Ellen will indeed marry Edwin, this expected providential lover, who while proving too easily tractable, genuinely loves her. Davenport's surprise ending exemplifies the dynamism of Romantic exchange. As noted, female-identified authors in Minerva's late period generally avoid the incendiary 'masculine' gothic. These authors draw from that tradition nonetheless when using convention to surprise or circumvent readers ' expectations, an argument that I advance in my analysis of The Woman of Colour (1808), published in London by Black, Parry and Kingsbury," just one year after the formal abolition of the British slave trade - but still twenty-six years before full emancipation. This novel, possibly by a woman of colour,Ann Wright,!6 is a powerful example of how novelists write a poetics of reproductive fiction, and in this case without a poet-figure. By linking the most singular moments in the novel to the conventional habits of mind that shape the heroine's subjectivity, this anonymous author treats feminine, reproductive writing as part and product of a 'spirit of the age' that both shapes and is shaped by authors' innovations.

8:2 Writing the Poetics of Popular Fiction, II: A Lyrical Turn to the Market The 2007 edition of The Woman of Colour includes Lyndon Dominique's argument that the author's emphasis on a free black woman's decision not to marry contributes to the abolition debateY Since then, other scholars have weighed in.!S One sizeable gap in this conversation, however, has been The Woman of Colour's relation­ ship to the circulating-library novel and to a tradition of borrowing traceable to Minerva's authorial modeP9 Sentimental conventions are central to The Woman if Colour's political design, 212

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the author's focus being sentimentality as taken up by period novelists in both Minerva's zenith period as well as the initial years of its decline. That is, while the author recalls the epistolary form, now long unfashionable, the novel reads like a contemporary circulating-library novel, being narrative-driven rather than episodic, and with the protagonist's story taking shape by and through Minerva's most popular conventions. Of particular importance is the author's repurposing of the providential novel's politics of feeling. In this case, the heroine's feelings, which she describes in a series of letters, parallel the inward turn that critics often equate with the high Romantic Poet's turn from the market. This inward turn, called 'Romantic lyricism' by twentieth- and twenty-first­ century scholars, takes discernment to even greater heights.20 The Poet, as an acutely sensitive human being, need only look inward to paint 'the human soul truly' , as John Stuart Mill was to explain in 1833.21 In The Woman of Colour, inexplicable feeling engenders conventional plot. In this case, however, the author-figure's split subjectivity as a racialized subject turns readers outwards to the market, so as to illuminate the limits but also potential of shared conventions for new vision.22 The novel begins with the voyage of a mixed-race protagonist, Olivia Fairfield, from Jamaica to England for an arranged marriage with her white cousin, Augustus Merton. By the end, Olivia has returned to Jamaica after discovering that Augustus had some years back married secretly and that his beloved wife is still alive (before meeting Olivia, Augustus had long presumed Angelina dead; the story of their marriage and Angelina's supposed death is withheld until late in the novel). The author is clear that Olivia has chosen to return to Jamaica, as she rejects the proposal of a worthy young white man, Mr Honeywood, who falls in love with her on the voyage to England. Although I agree with recent arguments that Olivia's choice to remain unmarried - or as she describes herself, a 'widow' - frees her from patriarchal constraints and also enables her to act both morally and politically outside the domestic sphere,23 this reading of the novel largely bypasses Olivia's impassioned love for Augustus and her heartbreak at the dissolution of their marriage. Echoing Sara Salih's concerns over 'a plot which effects the wrecking of an interracial marriage' ,24 I add that it is clear that the 213

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author intends to elicit mixed feelings from period readers, many of whom were probably cheering for Honeywood, the quintessential romantic lover. At the same time, Olivia's voice, which for most of the novel is both fervently political while also being intensely personal, becomes increasingly Evangelical in tone as the heroine works to control her own feelings by recalling her duties to God. Though Evangelical writers had experimented with fiction in the late eighteenth century, the 'Evangelical novel is only truly recog­ nizable at the beginning of the nineteenth century', Lisa Wood explains.25 Attending to the author's use of popular conventions, both older and new, illuminates ambiguities or points of tension in the novel's engagement with racial politics and, more specifically, the abolition debate. For example, Olivia returns to Jamaica to 'mend . . . the morals of our poor blacks' rather than to agitate for their emancipation, as she herself describes.26 At the same time, I show that by attending to the author's invocation of the 'politics of feeling', these ambiguities gain meaning, a set of mixed signals that draw readers into analysing both the limits but also the potential of a shared fantasy for engendering new narratives. Olivia's father, Mr Fairfield, is a rich Jamaican planter, and her mother (who died shortly after childbirth) a beautiful African of royal descent, whom the besotted Fairfield buys and takes as his mistress. Once Fairfield teaches Marcia Christian precepts, she teaches him in return that they have lived in sin. She dies shortly after childbirth. Olivia's father, though subject to racial prejudice himself, is keenly aware ofwhat his daughter suffers in living among the slaves and intends her to emigrate to England on his death. His will states that her £60,000 inheritance is contingent on her marriage to her cousin; else it goes to Augustus's elder brother and his wife (Olivia would be their dependant) . The author collapses easy distinctions between colony and metropole, however, by show­ ing that race-based prejudice thrives in England. Most of the novel is written as a series of letters from Olivia to her former governess, Mrs Milbanke, sent in two packets and supposedly compiled by an 'editor'. The novel opens with Olivia overseas, en route to England with her black servant, Dido.27 Olivia reflects on her father's will, representing it as 'generous' but also doubting the wisdom of his decree: 214

Minerva's 'Late' Novels I see that he means at once to secure to his child a proper protector in a husband, and to place her far from scenes which were daily hurting her sensibility and the pride of hwnan nature!- But, ah! Respected Mrs Milbanke! In guarding against these evils may he not have opened the way to those which are still more dangerous for your poor Olivia? (p. 55)

Had her father left her a 'decent competence', she would have remained in Jamaica and 'been happily and usefully employed in meliorating the sorrows of the poor slaves who came within my reach' (p. 5 6). According to Jennifer DeVere Brody, 'although the mulatta Olivia Fairfield expresses allegiance to a collective darker race . . . her primary allegiance takes the form of obedience to her benevolent white father.'2s Indeed, sentimental convention shows that Olivia is already halfWay in love with Augustus, or at least what she surmises of him based on his picture. Not only does he take after her father, but 'there is a speaking sensibility in the eye' that she imagines reflects 'all that I seek of for mind and sentiment in my destined husband' (p. 66). Already primed to fall in love with the man she presumes to be her ideal, Olivia is certain that the colour of her skin and her facial features will disgust him: Conscious of my own inferior powers of attraction, to what can I impute his acceptance of my hand? Hope will sometimes whisper, that gratitude will ensure kindness - but the cold feeling which alone springs from a grateful principle - could my wann heart be satisfied with that?- Vain, weak Olivia! go to thy mirror, and ask what is it thou canst expect more. (pp. 60-1)

Olivia wishes to stay in Jamaica not only to help her 'brethren' slaves, but also because she fears that she has no future in England. Even while withholding nearly all information about Augustus's past, the author clues readers to anticipate that his marriage to Olivia is ill-fated. That is, the violent clap of thunder on Olivia and Augustus's wedding day, or his subsequent trembling and pallor (p. 95), need no further explication. The author also provokes readers to see that some seemingly innate feelings are man-made. In the letters, Olivia provides transcript-like accounts of her conversations 215

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with others, allowing readers an intense glimpse of her innermost thoughts and feelings. For example, as they approach England, 0 livia tells her fellow passenger Mrs Honeywood that her 'heart revolts' , as she recalls 'that I must appear in s o very humiliating a situation when I reach England' (p. 59). These early letters create the effect of transparency, as readers are asked to see Olivia as Mrs Honeywood and her son do. As Mrs Honeywood tells her, 'You have great powers of exertion, Miss Fairfield; your father knew the strength of your mind; he knew that it could bear itself up in circumstances which would overwhelm half of the female world! ' (p. 59), or as her son, Honeywood, exclaims: 'you will shame our English ladies - or rather, you are going where your virtues will not be known or appreciated' (p. 65). Olivia's exemplary status lends her an author­ itative voice, with one important exception: Honeywood's obvious admiration for her provides a counterpoint to her belief that her dark skin and African features render her unlovable to a white man. Once in England, Olivia's subject position makes her keenly observant of others' feelings. On meeting her relations, Olivia picks up on their subtle - and often not-so-subtle - expressions of distaste. For example, in an oft-cited scene, Augustus's sister-in-law, Letitia Merton, has a plate of boiled rice brought out to the dinner table and directs it to Olivia:'Oh, I thought that Miss Fairfield - I under­ stood that people of your - I thought that you almost lived upon rice' (p. 77). Olivia, immediately aware of Mrs Merton's intent to humiliate, proudly claims her own kinship to African slaves - all the while emphasizing that their likely preference, if not subjugated, would be to eat bread just like Mrs Merton. Olivia thus manages to revise the scene in her own terms, implying that it is subjugation and not taste that distinguishes a white Englishwoman from a slave: 'The lady looked rather awkward, I thought . . . whilst Augustus offered me the butter, and my father's smile played round his mouth' (p. 78).While Olivia directly encounters racism on many occasions, racial prejudice plays a subtler role in the novel's central point of interest, Olivia's relationship with Augustus. Olivia is correct that Augustus cannot love her, yet the author goes to great lengths to show that his inability to feel more than a 'cool' esteem for his wife has little if anything to do with her race. Rather, Augustus, a conventional sentimental hero, can only love once. Through recourse 216

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to conventions, the author plots a double narrative, one with racial and gender politics at the centre and a second, with these politics displaced to the margins - the ultimate effect being that neither narrative stands intact. Augustus is represented as an exemplary individual who, in the style of Godwin's 1796 version of PoliticalJustice, is able to transcend prejudice that he acknowledges he cannot help but feel: The moment when my eyes were first cast on the person of my cousin, I started back with a momentary feeling nearly allied to disgust; for I beheld a skin approaching to the hue of a negro's, in the person whom my father introduced to me as my intended wife! [. . . but] A very few hours served to convince me, that whatever might have been the transient impression made by the colour of Olivia, her mind and form were cast in no common mould. (p. 102)

While readers are pushed to imagine that Augustus would choose Olivia were he capable ofloving again, Olivia's mixed race precip­ itates all the events of the novel, from her journey to England onward. If she had been white, her father would very likely not have insisted on her marriage to Augustus, but even ifhe had, Mrs Merton would not have dared to be cruel to a white heiress, making it easier for Augustus to be honest about his broken heart. But for racial politics, Augustus would not have felt obliged to rescue his cousin from his brother and sister-in-law, the latter of whom he knows will make Olivia's life miserable. As Augustus seems to avoid the topic of their engagement, Olivia opens her heart to his father, at least as much as a modest woman can. She is clear that while she feels herself honour-bound to her father's wishes, Augustus is free to make his own choice. Olivia strives to make Merton rec ognize her as a feeling subject, to prove to him what she would suffer were she to marry a man who does not love her. The unspoken subtext in this conversation, made legible through Olivia's emotion and 'burning blushes ', is her love for Augustus: 'Servitude, slavery; in its worst form, would be preferable,' said I, 'to fmding myself the wife of a man by whom I was not beloved! . . . Ah, 217

Gothic Habits of Mind Mrs Milbanke! Had Mr Merton understood the language of the looks, my emotion at this moment, my burning blushes would have proclaimed another tale!' (p. 89)

Eighteenth-century female British writers often drew analogies between their own state of subjugation and slavery, as Moira Ferguson illustrates.29 But in contrast to most of the writers of Ferguson's study, Olivia (daughter of both a slave and a plantation owner) has direct and personal experience with slavery, as Merton well knows. Olivia knows precisely what she is comparing, and she wants Merton to realize that her analogy is heartfelt. Merton, though, dismisses Olivia's fears, describing them as 'chimeras': 'I am confident that my son admires and esteems you' (p. 90). When Augustus and Olivia finally discuss their engagement, Augustus assures her of his esteem for her 'numerous and unrivalled virtues and perfections' (p. 9 3) . Olivia's happiness as Augustus's wife is brief, for shortly after their marriage, she discovers that he has withheld from her the secret agony of a broken heart. At a party, a 'Miss Danby' had knowingly inquired after a 'Miss Forester', leading Augustus to finally utter, with an anguished expression, that she is dead: Oh, Mrs Milbanke, how happy, how blest would be the lot of your Olivia, if her Augustus would but repose his cares in her faithful bosom! . . . But while he retains to himself this secret suffering, whilst he denies me the blessed privilege of sharing and soothing his sorrows, I feel that I am not half his wife - I am the partner of his bed - but not of his heart! (pp. 1 19-20)

Olivia's racial identity is indirectly related to her discovery. The couple had been at a party when Miss Danby seizes him by the hand and congratulates him on his marriage, staring boldly at Olivia. Olivia, ever attentive, notes that Augustus's lips seem to quiver, and that he is 'confused and embarrassed' (p. 1 1 3).As she cannot imagine Augustus ever being interested in such a forward woman, she can draw only one conclusion:'My husband is, then, ashamed of me - he is ashamed ofmy person - he dreads my being seen by any of his former acquaint­ ances as his wife;- I must then be still disgusting in his eyes' (p. 1 13). 218

Minerva's 'Late' Novels

Once again 0 livia misreads Augustus - but she correctly assesses Miss Danby's disregard for a woman of colour. Prejudice, the author suggests, is often subliminal, running beneath the surface. As in the providential novel, inexplicable feeling engenders plot. From this point onward, the author moves swiftly to the climactic scene of discovery, which is anticipated by a series of providential clues, e.g. Olivia's strong feeling of foreboding when her sister­ in-law, Letitia, comes to visit; Letitia's interest in a mysterious female who lives in the neighbouring cottage; a terrible thunderstorm that recalls the storm on Olivia's wedding night. On the night of the storm, Letitia leads Augustus and Olivia to the cottage, supposedly to check on the incognita. That lady springs from the cottage, crying 'save, oh save me! Augustus, save me! ' (p. 140), fainting before his feet. Olivia, confused, hears Augustus call this lady his wife. As she describes weeks later, after having finally gained enough strength after a fever to write, 'He saw not, he heard me not, even whilst I franticly knelt at his feet, and conjured him to tell me the meaning of the words he uttered . . . I felt the stroke of anguish - it seemed to pierce my heart - to fire my brain!- I, too, fainted in my turn' (p. 140). Olivia loves as intensely as any sentimental heroine, but rather than languish and die, she brings Angelina the jewels that Augustus gave her at their wedding. En route, 0 livia meets Augustus who is awestruck on learning of her errand. In the following exchange between Augustus and Olivia, the author revises senti­ mental conventions into Evangelical-style resignation: 'Where could you acquire such heroism, such generosity of soul,' asked Augustus? 'When the mind is thoroughly impressed with the consciousness of a super-intending Providence,' said I, 'it is sought to submit patiently to all its chastisements.' (p. 154)

When Augustus breaks down emotionally, in both guilt and pain, for having 'destroyed' her'peace' (p. 153) Olivia retains her strength of mind: It is part of my religious duty to endeavour to resign myself to the all-wise dispensations of the Most High. I scruple not to own to you, 219

Gothic Habits of Mind that, as my husband, I loved you with the wannest affection; that tie no longer exists, it is now become my duty to force you from my heart,- painful, difficult I acknowledge this to be, for your virtues had enthroned you there! (153-4)

Hannah More popularized the Evangelical novel in 1808 with Coelebs in Search of a Wife. More pointedly it distinguishes Coelebs from popular novels, the romance in particular, privileging plain language and unembellished narrative over dramatic events.30 While establishment Evangelicals like More were abolitionists, they also preached duty and resignation, especially to the lower orders, whom they portrayed as beneficiaries of spiritual but not social equality. White middle- to upper-class women also were expected to submit to a divinely ordained hierarchy, and More's hero, Charles, chooses just such a woman for his wife - though 'the moral authority of her voice is never undermined' , she is 'virtually voiceless', and even critics commented on Lucilla's insipidity.31 Like More, the author of The Woman of Colour contributes to what would soon be a new subgenre, but in this case, by putting the conventions of popular romance, most notably the 'masculine' gothic, to the service of abolitionist and feminist arguments. Olivia's portrait ofAngelina is strikingly similar to Dacre's and Shelley's victims, Lilla and Julia: The gratitude, the bashful timidity of Angelina, her dove-like eyes, her transparent complexion, the delicacy of her fragile fonn, all rendered her a most interesting object. She seems peculiarly to require the assistance and support of the lordly creature man, and to be ill-calculated for braving the difficulties oflife alone. (p. 155)

Like Dacre's Victoria, Olivia is tall, dark, majestically built and endowed with an almost masculine strength of mind. While Dacre juxtaposes the dark anti-heroine with the light, fairy-like ideal, Lilla is passive and voiceless, as insipid, even, as More's Lucilla. As illus­ trated in Chapter 7, the feminist potential of this juxtaposition breaks down in the second half of the novel, as Victoria falls victim to her most impassioned feelings. We see nearly the opposite effect in The Woman if Colour, as the author adapts sentimental conventions 220

Minerva's 'Late' Novels

to an Evangelical framework. Resigning herself to her fate, Olivia praises Angelina, extolling her feminine beauty and fragility, all the while revealing her own capacity to feel intensely while still direct­ ing her own actions. As she recounts to Mrs Milbanke on her journey to the cottage, 'my soul seemed armed with a gloomy sort of resolution' (p. 1 5 1). After her interview with Angelina, Olivia retires with Dido to Wales, where she is still pained by constant thoughts of Augustus. Dido, who discovers that she and Olivia are living in a cottage on Honeywood's estate, invites him to visit their cottage, believing that he will propose to Olivia, who will then once again be happy. The coincidence of Olivia's reunion with Honeywood promises a conventional ending, but on their first interview, Honeywood, shocked, discerns the truth. Olivia still loves Augustus, despite the fact that her love was unrequited: 'But with no reciprocation of attachment, no congeniality of sentiment, could your delicate, your sensitive mind be satisfied with a widowed heart, with-' (p. 163). Honeywood then explains himself 'Hear me tell you, that on board the ****, whilst daily present with you - whilst listening to your melodious voice - to your noble sentiments - to the delicate purity of your conversation, I drank deep draughts of a passion which was as violent as it was hopeless. Vainly did reason and reflection urge me to break my bonds . . . You are free, you are unfettered;- I may now, with pride; with glory; avow, that I doat on you to distraction; that your recent trials in the hard school of adversity have heightened (oh, how highly heightened) you in my esteem; and that the pity of Olivia Fairfield would be more precious to me, than the love of any other woman.' (p. 164)

Honeywood's love for Olivia is the 'holy bond', friendship ignited, the 'true voluptuousness' ofWollstonecraft's Rights of Woman, but Olivia adheres to the sentimental heroine's credo, never to love twice. Olivia has, from the novel's outset, headed towards a prede­ termined conclusion. More than simply following her father's wishes, she internalizes her vow, loving her cousin practically before meeting him. Once in England, Olivia would have done well to follow her intuition, as she did when questioning her uncle about 221

Gothic Habits of Mind

Augustus's feelings. In the providential novel, intuition clues the hero or heroine (not to mention intended readers) to a hidden truth. In The Woman if Colour, Olivia's intuition is a crossed signal, misguiding both Olivia and readers. Olivia does the unimaginable by marrying a man who does not love her - and yet misinformation (resulting from Mr Merton's ambitions for his son, and Augustus's well-meaning if misguided feelings) allows her to believe that perhaps she has misjudged Augustus's feelings. The novel concludes with a dialogue between the putative ' editor' of the letters and a friend, with the latter asking why the editor has not rewarded the virtuous Olivia with a husband. The editor replies: 'If these pages . . . teach one sceptical European to look with a compas­ sionate eye towards the despised native ofMrica, then, whether Olivia Fairfield's be a real or an imaginary character, I shall not regret that I have edited the Letters of a Woman of Colour! ' (p. 189)

While the editor is dismissive oflove, the favourite theme ofpopular novels, Olivia's love for Augustus was predetermined by a white, English father who intends, as Emily Rebecca Woomer argues, to 'whiten his bloodline and strengthen his dynastic ties with the metropole' (p. 153). Olivia's return to Jamaica could represent her break with this intention - and yet, as mentioned, early in the novel the self-aware Olivia recognizes that her desire to remain in Jamaica reflects at least in part her fear of humiliation in England.As Olivia's worst fears materialize, it is difficult to read the final conclusion as the author's victorious break with convention, especially as Olivia remains broken-hearted. Instead, in gesturing to the fervent love of Minerva's networked fantasies, I suggest that the author breaks with convention so as to show the limits but also potential of a shared social text for socio-political critique.32 Like the other novels discussed in this chapter, the author of The Woman of Colour takes a meta-discursive turn. By the end of the novel, Mrs Letitia Merton is written off as a hapless quixotic reader, enamoured by sentimental novels but so lacking in sensi­ bility herself as to plot revenge against Augustus (with whom she had once been 'violently in love'; p. 175), on discovering that he has married her cousin Angelina, a dependant of the family. Letitia 222

Minerva's 'Late' Novels

and her mother concoct a plot that involves informing Angelina that Augustus is her seducer, not her husband; Augustus, in turn, is told that Angelina is dead. On Olivia's arrival in England, Letitia's avarice leads her to scheme anew for Olivia's inheritance. While the author's emphasis on Letitia's addiction to sentimental novels could be read as yet another Evangelical critique of novels as 'poison' ,33 Honeywood's impassioned love for Olivia - the stuff of Minerva fantasy - suggests instead the c ontinued salience of this fantasy for authors bent on contributing to the day's socio­ political debates. From the start of Minerva's run, the sentimental fantasy of everlasting romantic love was borrowed material. By the time the Press is 'branded' as a factory for reproductive novels, novelists borrow this fantasy once again, now imbued by canonical Romantics' appropriation of it. As Alastor falls into sentimental decline, he laments that his powers are wasted 'in the deaf air' , 'the blind earth' and a 'heaven that echoes not my thoughts'.34 This lament recalls Wordsworth's efforts to create a sympathetic audi­ ence, one capable of being moved by genuine feeling rather than popular conventions. Whereas the idealized Poet ofWordsworth's Preface breaks free from stale associations by remodelling his own habits of mind, Minerva novelists represent conventional habits of mind and feelings as the foundation for new associations or vision. Their novels impact on canonical Romanticism, not just on a material basis but formally, as a structure of feeling. A shared authorial community is part of the 'spirit of the age ' , and Shelley's portrayal of the poet as 'prophet' in 'Defence' surely derives in part from his own pleasure in reading - and writing - his own two gothic novels. Simultaneously, as Shelley inadvertently suggests, even the poet is not free from the biases of his age. In 'Defence', Shelley participates in the cultural work that pits an elevated indi­ vidual against the maj ority, awarding only the Poet the capacity to voice new visions. Shelley's impassioned portrayal of the Poet as prophet reveals trace elements of the anxiety that has rendered Minerva's derivative novels all the same. In turn, as Minerva novel­ ists stage the political possibilities of reproductive writing, they signify that writing as 'Romantic ' , reauthorizing the sentimental novels central to Minerva's early impact on the novel market. In 223

Gothic Habits of Mind

valorizing the vision of sentimental love, these novelists prove that their voice is central to a group of novels long dismissed for being derivative. Voice, in this case, both reflects and reconstitutes a shared social text.

224

Afterword

In his 1833 essay, 'What is Poetry?',John Stuart Mill uses Minerva as a byword for what 'true' poetry is not: 'story as mere story, as is the case of some of the most trashy productions of the Minerva Press '.l As Dorothy Blakey demonstrates, Victorian critics used 'Minerva' as a metonym for all cheap fiction, so it is unremarkable that Mill would refer directly to Minerva here .' It is noteworthy, however, that Mill refers to Minerva when contending that the philosopher's work should begin with what the public already feels: 'Where everyone feels a difference, a difference there must be . . . Let us then attempt, in the way of modest inquiry, not to coerce and confine nature within the bounds of an arbitrary definition, but rather to find the boundaries which she herself has set.'3When later in the essay Mill defines poetry, 'Minerva' stands for the antithesis of this feeling, as expressed by a previous generation of poets and as felt by their readers. Mill is emphatic, in other words, that he is saying nothing new about poetry; rather, his discussion will resonate simply because it states what readers already feel to be true. Whereas Mill claims that his readers will recognize what they know to be true once it has been properly defined, Minerva's Gothics has revealed the ways that Minerva's network of popular conventions and turns of phrase reflect values and feelings that, for intended readers, require no definition or explication. I have also made the case that period authors, now canonical and Minerva-sJX'nsored alike,

Afterword

gain 'eloquence' through their use of Minerva's shared circuit of popular c onventions, as these c onventions enable them to be heard (even if- or perhaps especially if - they do not acknowledge their use, as in Wordsworth's case). This word, 'eloquence', is itself borrowed from a conclusive moment in Romantic exchange. On the threshold of the Victorian period, Mill portrays true poetry as the poet's turn inwards to soliloquize authentic feeling. By contrast, the 'eloquent' poet is a mere rhetorician for whom emotion is just another means of persuasion: Poetry and eloquence are both alike the expression or uttering forth of feeling. But if we may be excused the seeming affectation of the antithesis, we should say that eloquence is heard, poetry is overheard. Eloquence supposes an audience; the peculiarity of poetry appears to us to lie in the poet's utter unconsciousness of a listener.4

Mill's representation of true poetry was persuasive to Victorian critics who memorialized the poet as above politics and the market (though in some cases, by excoriating the poet's solipsism).' Twentieth-century Romanticists, Sarah Zimmerman demonstrates, made much of Mill's essay, representing the poet as literally turning away from his audience and making himself a conduit for the transcendent in art. Contemporary critics provide a more expansive view of Romantic lyricism, showing how the poetical inward turn can enable writers to identifY with others and to engage with social and political questions. As Zimmerman aptly puts it, until recently, Romantic lyricism reflected Mill's own eloquence as much as it did canonical Romanticism.6 But there is more to say about Mill's essay. In defining true poetry as the utterance of an exceptionally sensitive individual, who (through self-study) captures the truth of the human soul,7 Mill draws heavily from his Romantic predeces­ sors, Wordsworth and Shelley in particular. Yet in the canonical scholarship on Romanticism for which Mill's essay is foundational (in particular M. H. Abram's The Mirror and Lamp, 1953, and Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, 1957), Wordsworth presides and Shelley is neglected. S In a companion piece to 'What is Poetry?' Mill compares Wordsworth to Shelley, suggesting that only Shelley 226

Afterword

possesses a poetic 'nature': 'he is a poet, not because he has ideas of any kind, but because the succession of his ideas is subordinate to the course of his emotions.'9 By c ontrast, Wordsworth's poetry 'is almost always the mere setting of a thought'.lo Mill's idealized Poet is a blend ofWordsworth's carefully disciplined habits of mind and Shelley's intense and effusive emotion. The poet's feelings are his guide, but his strength of mind ensures that he is at the vanguard 'before his age' and not simply 'behind it' ll As a philosopher, Mill works to define already shared sentiments about poetry. Mill's philosopher resembles Shelley's poet-as-nightingale. Shelley's Poet moves his readers because he expresses what they already feel but do not yet have language for. Mill may oppose eloquence and genuine feeling, but in describing his own objectives as a philoso­ pher, he treats the two as mutually constituent. Even today, despite new emphases in scholarship on the Romantic period (e.g. demonstrations of how lyricism provides period writers with the opportunity to identifY with others and to engage social and political questions), Mill's distinction between eloquence (the rhetor's pragmatic or even cynical use of ready-to-hand persuasive techniques) and poetry (the poet's creation of a wholly singular expression from sincere emotional response) persists in Minerva's reputation for formulaic ephemera. While, as Michael Gamer and others have shown, the poet's composition is no longer valorized as 'above' market concerns, Minerva's reputation for derivative, reproductive writing persists because we have had a difficult time imagining women's formulaic novels as social - as a place where shared desires and motives are both reflected and constituted as well as always contested and remadeY Romanticists and scholars from the emerging international field of , Writing Studies' have taken joint interest in historicizing and thus also gendering terms like genius, originality and inspiration. We now know that eighteenth-century texts on writing and rhetoric (e.g. Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition, 1759; William Duff's Essay on Original Genius, 1767; Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 1783) index and inaugurate an epistemic shift away from classical rhetoric, with its emphasis on the rhetor's location in the social polis, towards 'Romantic 'portrayals of authorial invention.13 Both fields of study have broadened as a 227

Afterword

result, engendering on the one hand, attention to publishing and book history and the creation of concepts like Romantic anxiety, and on the other, ethnomethodological studies of writers in organ­ izational and cultural contexts.14 But literary studies still benefits from the cultural capital that accrues to Romantic redefinitions of literature as a highly select form of writing with value that tran­ scends its time. Those who are primarily concerned with writing instruction, in turn, can now trace their historic marginalization back to the Romantic era itself, when writing as 'eloquence' is replaced by writing as 'original expression'. As rhetorical genre theorists demonstrate, genres reflect and shape institutions, from academic disciplines to the university itself Genres (and the social relations they routinize) persist because they frame what they permit as that which is possible .is Dialogue among writers accustomed to different conventions (and the values and motives that inform those conventions) primes all writers to be more mindful of genre itself as a shared social text that both enables and delimits specific actions, mindsets and activities. Earlier, I suggested that the ethos of genius makes Minerva's authorial network more visible to contemporary readers , and that this model, once recognized, finally makes the work of reproduc­ tive novels legible to scholars and critics. Remapping Minerva's territory to include its networked conventions also invites reread­ ings of some of Romanticism's most influential texts. For example, a reassessment of Shelley's poet-as-nightingale as a forgotten poetics of Romantic exchange puts pressure on other canonical readings including Abrams et al. 's presumption that Mill's ideal poet is modelled after Wordsworth. Such pressures could crack open new vantage points on literary history and how it shapes English studies. It is no small irony that both Romanticists and scholars of writing studies have invested in historicizing 'genius ' , and not only because Romantic redefinitions o f authorship and literature justifY one type of work and denigrate the other. In the past two decades, critics have written Minerva back into literary history. We now see Romantic poetics as in part a reaction to a shared social text - Romantic anxiety being, in this case, period writers' unacknowledged exchange with prolific print culture. The novels themselves, when read as a network, suggest that, for 228

Afterword

some Romantic-era writers, eloquence coexisted with poetics and rhetoric with feeling. The project of this book has been to show how literary histories have reduced a dynamic networked exchange to just one node on the network: Wordsworth's Romantic anxiety. Shelley's image of the poet as prophet, though not directly 'borrowed' from circulating­ library novels , shares their spirit. The poet does not transcend his audience; his prophecy echoes their sentiments even as it attempts to shape them. The poet's verse, as imagined by Shelley, is a funda­ mentally social composition, reflecting and constituting the spirit of the age. Today's critical models for Romantic-era studies are beginning to acknowledge this sociality, at least to the degree that we are now routinely reading Romantic writers as part of a larger circle (from friends and family to authors, publishers and book­ sellers). Were we to expand this circle to Minerva's inclusive network, we would be better readers of the shared circuit of conventions from which period writers derive their 'eloquence', or how it is that they come to be heard and by whom.

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Notes

Chapter 1 1 2

3

4 s

Moretti, Distant Reading (London, 2013), p. 66. By 1793, critics were beginning to stigmatize Lane's press, although, as in this first example, sometimes as part of a larger conglomerate of circulating-library publishers: 'what is impossible to a mind fraught with the rich treasures, dispensed by Lane, Hookharn, and Co.', review of Belleville Lodge, Critical Review, 7 (March 1793), 337; 'the flimsy compositions from Leadenhall-street', review of Henry, a Novel, Critical Review, 9 (December 1793), 475--6; 'the general run of publications from the press of Mr Lane', review of Woman as She Should Be, Critical Review, 9 (September 1793), 118; 'the quantity of novels with which Mr Lane deluges the public', review of Mortimer Castle, English Review, 22 (October 1793), 22.As mentioned above (n. 28), the 'branding' of Minerva as a factory for formulaic fluff begins as early as 1794. Moretti, Distant Reading, p. 66; also Graphs, Maps, Trees:Abstract Models for a Literary History (London, 2005), p. 1. Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees, p. 18. Garside, Raven and Schowerling's compilation of publishing records substantiates that Minerva played an important role for debuting novelists, but these records do not include novels that appear only in periodicals, and as Jennie Batchelor suggests, Minerva may have

Notes

6 7 s

9

10

11

12

poached some of its authors from the popular Lady's Magazine. 'UnRomantic Authorship:The Minerva Press and the Lady's Magazine (1770-1820)', Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1 7801840 (forthcoming 2019). Blakey, The Minerva Press, p. 22. Lisa Gitelman, 'Raw Data' is an Oxymoron (Cambridge, Mass., 2013). Blakey; The Minerva Press, p. 309; Austen, Northanger Abbey, ed. Claire Grogan, second edn (peterborough, Ont., 2004) , p. 63. See the reports section of "RflmanticTextualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1 780-1840, http://www.romtext.org.uk/reportsl. Retrieved 30 April 2018. Lane began printing at the Leadenhall Street Press in 1773. See Blakey, The Minerva Press, p. 47. Though Lane does not invest in earnest in the novel market until 1785, we should take stock of his publications in the early 1780s, as he publishes eight novels between 1780 and 1784, including William Godwin's Imogene, 1784, in contrast to just three in the late 1770s. I include only original novels published in Britain. Future studies might explore how translators interact with source material or how American authors interact with Minerva themes (American publishers reprinted more Minerva novels than those by any other single British or European publisher in the early nineteenth century. See Eve Tavor Bannet, 'Charles Brockden Brown and England: of Genres, the Minerva Press, and the Early Republican Print Trade', in Transatlantic Literary Exchanges, 1 790 -1870: Gender, RAce, and Nation (2011), pp. 133-52 (p. 134)). 'Sir Anthony Carlisle and Mrs Carver', Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1 780 1840', 19 (2009) , 54-96, http://www.romtext. org.uklreportslrt19_n041. Retrieved 30 June 2017. For distinctions among publishers, including Longman and Lane, see Raven, 'Historical Introduction: The Novel Comes of Age', in Peter Garside,James Raven and Rainer Schowerling (eels), The English Novel, 1 770-1829 (Oxford, 2000), vol. 1, p. 78; also The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1 450-1850 (New Haven, 2007) , p. 295. Batchelor finds Copeland's emphasis on social class over-schematic but she also stresses the financial difficulties many Minerva novelists faced. See 'The Claims of Literature', pp. 515-18. Like Batchelor, I attend to how authors repurpose increasingly masculinized and profes­ sionalized discourse about authorship. See 'Claims', pp. 507-12; also -

13

14

232

Notes

15

16

17

18

19

20

Women's Work: Labour, Gender, Authorship, 1 750-1830 (Manchester, 2010),pp. 8 -11. But Copeland is right, I think, to characterize Minerva novels as a recognizable category, a point that Edward Jacobs develops when contending that, because they are generic, circulating-library novels teach readers to become savvy, even playful writers, the sort of writers that publishers like Lane would have sought. See Accidental Migrations: An Archaeology ofGothic Discourse (Lewisburg, 2000), pp. 192 -235; also 'Ann Radcliffe and Romantic Print Culture', in Dale Townshend and Angela Wright (eds), Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic (Cambridge, 2014), p. 52. Raven explains that this style of attribution helped him and his research team when compiling bibliographic entries, both in identifying authors but also in linking multiple anonymous novels together as probably by the same author, 'The Novel Comes of Age', p. 41. 'The English Novel in the Romantic Era', in The English Novel, vol. 2, pp. 69-70. I err on the side of caution by omitting all titles that are linked only tenuously to specific authors. I also omit authors who are tenuously linked to all of their publications, as well as authors identified only by pseudonyms, many ofwhich are obviously written in jest, like 'Sylvania Pastorella' or 'Dr Typo'. While most of these still unidentified pseu­ donymous authors are associated with just one novel, Minerva's 'Anthony Frederick Holstein', who published twelve novels (ten with Minerva) between 1810 and 1815, is a notable exception. To be consistent, I exclude Holstein from calculations for identified authors. Three women (including Amelia Opie) and just one man, William Godwin, published with Lane by or before 1790. (See n. 20 for how I measure 'prolific' production.) Unlike many other types of statistical analyses, Fisher's is non­ parametric; that is, it does not asswne that the data are distributed nonnally (a normal distribution looks like a bell curve). There is no reason, after all, to asswne that inclination or ability to publish novels is 'normally' distributed among a population in the way that height or weight is. Fisher's is also well suited to relatively small sample sizes. The test used in this analysis can be found at http://www.graphpad. com /quickcalcs /contingency2 /Fisher's test. Retrieved 30 April 2018. The dataset is of assistance here - the 3-5-novel author category showed no statistically significant difference among categories of 233

Notes

21

22

23

24

25 26 Zl

28 29

30

31

32

writers, a distinction we see with the 6+ -novel category; because of its relative rarity, it seemed the best measure for prolific output. Cheryl Turner, Living by the Pen: Women Writers in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1994), p. 39; also Raven, 'The Novel Comes of Age', pp. 70-4; Garside, 'The English Novel in the Romantic Era', p. 85. Jacobs, 'Eighteenth-Century British Circulating Libraries and Cultural Book History', Book History, 6 (2003), 1-21; also Blakey, The Minerva Press, p. 5 1 ; Raven, 'The Novel Comes of Age', 42. Elizabeth Pinchard debuted as 'by a lady' with E. Newbery in 1791 and published with Newbery again in 1794, but by name; in 1814, she signed 'by a lady' once more, now with Colburn. The market value of this signature is most evident when a novelist debuts by name only to publish a year or two later 'by a lady', as is the case with Minerva novelists Susanna Rowson (1789), Mrs Johnson (1787), and Ann Howell (1789). Still the signature persists, most notably with Austen in Sense and Sensibility, 1811. Garside, 'The English Novel in the Romantic Era', pp. 45--6. Garside, 'The English Novel in the Romantic Era', pp. 16-17. Ann Julia Hatton, Catherine George Ward, Emma Parker, Mrs Ross, Amelia Beauclerc, Selina Davenport and Mrs Agnes Crombie Hall (non-Minerva authors are Elizabeth B. Lester and Anne Raikes Harding). Garside, 'The Novel Comes of Age', p. 85. See Raven, 'The Novel Comes ofAge' , p. 26, for publishers' tendency to forward-date novels so that they appeared new for longer. Most facsimiles from databases cut off some or most of these adver­ tisements, necessitating examination of the material novels themselves. Ads might be unique to particular copies; the copies I examined are at the Chawton House Library. For Newman and the remainder market, see Blakey, The Minerva Press, p. 47; Garside, 'The English Novel in the Romantic Era', p. 86. My examination ofboth Minerva novels and those with other presses suggests that all presses show a decline in paper quality in the 1810s, though Minerva's appears to be greater than average. For discussion of shifting trends in paper for Romantic-era book production, includ­ ing the new machine-made paper, first available in 1800, see Raven, 234

Notes

33 34

35

36

37

3S

39

40

41

42

The Business of .&oks. Booksellers and the English Book Trade, 1450-1850 (New Haven, 2007), pp. 308-9. Garside also explains that paper was the most expensive element of book production, accounting for half to two-thirds of the production cost, and that in the later years of the Napoleonic wars, the cost for imports of raw material for making paper, like linen, was at an all-time high, 'The English Novel in the Romantic Era', p. 44. Early in Minerva's run, Lane advertised the quality of his paper, and after 1800, he shifted to machine-made paper, which was 'harsh in texture, coarse in grain, and of a grey or yellowish colour'; Blakey, The Minerva Press, p. 80. Raven, 'The Novel Comes ofAge', pp. 38-40. Using the same measures as for the women, my totals were thirty-one (Minerva) and sixty-one (non-Minerva) . More than one in three Minerva men are persistent (20 of 55, or 36 per cent), in contrast to around one of ten non-Minerva men (27 of 231, or 12 per cent). For changing reviewing practices, see Garside, 'The English Novel in the Romantic Era', p. 16. For this image, see Newlyn, Reading, Writing, and Romanticism, pp. 41-5; also Ferris, The Achievement of Literary Authority, p. 43; Clery; The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, pp. 96-7. Via the quixotic female reader, mid-eighteenth-century writers legit­ imized the novel as a moral fonn. See William Warner, Licensing Entertainment: The Elevation of Novel Reading in Britain, 1 684-1750 (Berkeley, 1998), p. 14; also Catherine Gallagher, Nobody's Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1 670- 1 820 (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 171-9. G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992), pp. 15-36. See Sarah Raff, 'Quixotes, Precepts and Galateas:The Didactic Novel in Eighteenth-Century Britain', Comparative Literature Studies, 43/4 (2006), 470-6; also Eve Tavor Bannet, The Domestic Revolution: Enlightenment Feminisms and the Novel (Baltimore, 2000) , p. 10. See Timothy Clark, Embodying Revolution: The Figure of the Poet in Shelley (Oxford, 1989), p. 9; James Averill, Wordsworth and the Poetry of Human Suffering (Ithaca, 1980), pp. 21-3. 'Preface (1800) ' , in Michael Gamer and Dalia Porter (eds) Lyrical Ballads 1 798 and 1800 (Peterborough, Ont., 2008), p. 175. 235

Notes 43 44

45

46

.fl

4S 49

50

51

52

53 54 55 56

See Siskin, The Historicity of Romantic Discourse, p. 12. See Chapter 8 for a fourth novel - in this case, a Minerva reprint that features a different kind of interview between a male novelist and his publisher; this novelist fails to sell his work. See Blakey, The Minerva Press, pp. 69-71; McLeod, 'The Minerva Press', pp. 7-9; Raven, 'The Novel Comes of Age', pp. 91-2, and Elizabeth Neiman, 'The Female Authors of the Minerva Press and "Copper Currency": Revaluing the Reproduction of " Imrnaculate-Born Minervas"', in Michael Rotenberg-Schwartz and Tara Czechowski (eds) , Global Economies, Cultural Currencies of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 2012), p. 284. Edward Jacobs, 'Anonymous Signatures: Circulating Libraries, Conventionality and the Production of Gothic Romances', English Literary History, 62 (1995), p. 611. Deirdre Lynch, The Economy of Charader: Novels, Market Culture and the Business of Inner Meaning (Chicago, 1998), p. 130. Lynch, The Economy of Charader, pp. 131-2. For this earlier argument, see Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (New Haven, 1979), pp. 1-3. For Catherine as a quixotic reader, see Natalie Neil, "'The Trash with which the Press Now Groans": Northanger Abbey and the Gothic Bestsellers of the 17905, Eighteenth-Century Novel, 4 (2004), 162-88; also Mary Waldron,jane Austen and the Fidion ofher Time (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 27-8. See Douglass Thomson and Frederick Frank, 'Jane Austen and the Northanger Novelists', in Douglass Thomson,Jack Voller and Frederick Frank, Gothic Writers:A Critical and Bibliographic Guide (London, 2002) , pp. 34-47. For Austen's knowing use of popular conventions, see Clara Tuite, Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon (Cambridge, 2002) , p. 32; Waldron,Jane Austen and the Fiction of her Time, p. 46. Austen, Northanger Abbey, p. 60. The Follies of St.James Street (London, 1789), vol. 1, p. 8; also p. 12. The reference is to Fanny Burney's Evelina, 1778. Blakey; The Minerva Press, pp. 69-71; McLeod, 'The Minerva Press', pp. 7-9; Raven, 'The Novel Comes ofAge', pp. 91-2; Neiman, 'The Female Authors of the Minerva Press', p. 284. 236

Notes 57

58

59 w 61

Q 63

64

65

66

67

68

Miss Mortimer enters the narrative near the end of volwne one and is referenced three times (pp. 121, 122, 124). In volwne two, Miss Mortimer's name is directly referenced 56 times in 189 pages. Review of Follies, Monthly Review, or, Literary Journal (4 January 1791), 92. Lynch, The Economy of Charader, pp. 123-63. Hess, Authoring the Self, pp. 14-18. This novel is usually treated as anonymous but it has been associated with a ' Mrs Mathews', possibly Eliza Kirkham Mathews. See Garside, Raven and Sch6werling, The English Novel, vol. 2, p. 139. What Has Been (London, 1801), vol. 1, p. 46. In its emphasis on both poetic genius and conventional narratives, this novel makes for a particularly suggestive example of possible parallels between Minerva's network and other networked Romantic-era female writers in both England and beyond. See, for example, Stephen Behrendt's British Women Poets and the Romantic Writing Community (Baltimore, 2009) and Patrick Vincent's The Romantic Poetess: European Culture, Politics, and Gender, 1 820-1840 (Durham, NH, 2004). Both contend that women poets create a communal model of authorship, Vincent stressing that the 'poetess's' verse was not meant to be original, p. xxii, and Behrendt illustrating that female poets were in conversation with both each other and the male poetic tradition, p. 4. According to Batchelor, 'Even the most radical ofwomen writers have appeared squeamishly genteel in their treatment of work,' Women's Work: Labour, Gender, Authorship, p. 1 1 . Dorothea's critique of Emily's pride, however, provides something of a counter-example, especially if we conclude that readers are being pushed to read authorship as labour. See Adriana Craciun, 'Introduction', in Charlotte Dacre, Zofioya, ed. Adriana Craciun (peterborough, Ont., 1997), p. 1 1 . See Sharon Cameron, Lyric Time: Dickinson and the Limits of Genre (Baltimore, 1979), p. 240. Wordsworth, 'Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802) ' , in William Wordsworth: The Major Works, p. 604. Wordsworth,'Preface (1800)', in Lyrical Ballads, 1 798 and 1800, p. 183. In the 1802 version, this passage follows Wordsworth's description of the Poet's momentary 'delusion', William Wordsworth:The Major Works (Oxford, 2008), p. 604. 237

Notes 69 70 71

72

73

74

75

76

Review of What Has Been, Critical Review, 32 (July 1801), 351-2. Garside, 'The English Novel in the Romantic Era', pp. 16-17. Wollstonecraft's work for Analytical Review played an early and influ­ ential role in this shift according to Mary Waters, British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism, 1 789- 1 832 (Basingstoke, 2004) , pp. 91-100. The first manuscript draft of Northanger Abbey, entitled 'Susan', was likely written arOlmd 1798 or 1799.Austen probably revised it in 1816 before it was fmally published in 1817. See Claire Grogan, 'Introduction', in Claire Grogan (ed.), Northanger Abbey (Peterborough, Ont., 2004) , p. 15. The quoted passage begins 'when imperious love takes possession of the heart, all its gaiety departs.' While Hatton's chosen title, Fatal Obedience, could be a reference to the 1769 Fatal Obedience: or the History of Mr Freedland, having read this novel I can ascertain that Hatton's quoted passage \N'aS either her own invention or transcribed from some other novel. Anne Hatton, Cambrian Pictures: or, Every One has Errors (London, 1813), vol. 1, p. 38; vol. 2, p. 222. Hatton sustains her meta-commentary about novels by showing that Adeline and her lover succwnb to their passion after reading Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (Hatton revises Werther's final encounter with Lotte - both women find themselves alone with their lovers when their husbands are out of town, but Lotte flees Werther after just one impassioned kiss) . Direct reference to Werther is rare in Minerva novels, though also see Amelia Beauclerc's Ora and Juliet; or Influence of First Principles (1811). If the beautiful but shallow Juliet's reading habits land her in continuous trouble (most notably; she marries a man she does not love in the hope that her beloved will forever pine after her - but he marries someone else), like Hatton, Beauclerc uses Werther to advertise more generic novels - in this case, specifically Minerva's. The exemplary Harriet reads a Minerva novel (A Soldier's Offspring, 1810) aloud to the innocent, modest Ora: 'it \N'aS a new publication, and though placed in the rank of novels, it was natural and interesting. In it was no bombast of words, no far-sought expressions. It was written with the feelings of a delicate woman'; vol. 2, p. 204. Green's strategy worked: 'The singularity of the title of this satirical novel, made us eagerly cut the leaves and sit down close to the perusal 238

Notes

T7

78

of Romance Readers and Romance Writers', Critical Review (20 July 1810), 273. In Christopher Goulding (ed.), Romance Readers and Romance Writers (London, 2010), p. 98. See Claudia Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (Cambridge, 1999), p. xv; also Behrendt, British Women Poets, p. 21.

S E C T ION ONE Overview 1

2

3 4 5 6

7

Jacobs, 'Anonymous Signatures', p. 613. While in retrospect it may appear that Lane intended to market his Press to debuting female authors,Joe Lines has recently observed that Lane also invested in the 'masculine' subgenre of the ramble novel between 1784 and 1790. See 'William Lane, the Ramble Novel and the Genres of Romantic Irish Fiction', in Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1 780-1840 (forthcoming 2019). Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler (eds), The Works of Mary WollstonelTaft (New York, 1989), vol. 7, p. 82; also p. 92. In Janet Todd (ed.), A Vindication of the Rights ofWoman, p. 103. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, p. 191. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, p. 225. Following the empiricist tradition, Wollstonecraft and Wordsworth both respectively treat most 'common' writers and readers as inscribed by convention, insofar as their habits of mind and feelings follow the predicated patterns of the day. Only those individuals capable of recognizing these habits for what they are - substitutes for real thought and feeling - are free to actually think and feel in new ways. See Timothy Michael's recent effort to put into dialogue Romantic epis­ temology, and its particular emphasis on freedom of the mind, with Romantic politics, and its draw, in turn, on the empiricist, rational tradition: British Romanticism and the Critique of Political Reason (Baltimore, 2015), pp. 2-29. 'Revolutionary feminism' is Gary Kelly's phrase for the brand of feminism that was an outgrowth of two revolutions: the 'cultural revolution' that, over the course of the eighteenth century, relocated 239

Notes

s

9

Britain's centre of influence from the court to the professions, and the French Revolution debate in Britain in the 1790s. For this phrase, see RevolutiolUlry Feminism: The Mind and Career ofMary Wollstonecrajt (New York, 1992), p. 1 . In Women, Writing, and Revolution, 1 790-1827 (Oxford, 1993), Kelly further explains that eighteenth-century writers represented personal subjectivity; rather than action and valour, as the defining feature of personal worth and ethical life. While women of the professional classes participated in and benefited from the 'cultural revolution', revolutionary feminists, most famouslyWollstonecraft, also challenged one of its central features - the discursive construction of 'Woman' as naturally domestic, private, and modest, pp. 5-6. Mary Poovey, The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works ofMary Wollstoneaaft, Mary Shelley, andJaneAusten (Chicago, 1984), p. 96. See Barbara Taylor, Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (Cambridge, 2003), p. 131; also p. 231. Chapter 2

1

2

3 4

5 6 7 s

9 10

Janet Todd, Sensibility: An Introdudion (London, 1986), pp. 68-9; G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992), p. 9. Gary Kelly (ed.), Mary and The Wrongs of Woman (Oxford, 2009), p. 56. Lynch, The Economy of Character, pp. 152-3. 'Feminist' was coined in the late nineteenth century. Miriam Wallace summarizes feminist literary critics' debate over the pros and cons of applying this tenn to earlier writers. Following Wallace, I use 'feminist' to describe writers who are 'significantly conscious of the social oppression of female-embodied people', Revolutionary Subjects in the English Jawbin' Novel, p. 27. Bawarshi, Genre and the Invention of the Writer, p. 7. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, p. 196. Todd, Sensibility:An Introduction, p. 4. Nicola Watson, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1 790-1 825: Intercepted Letters, Intercepted Seductions (Oxford, 2001), p. 40. The Sentimental Deceiver, or, History ofMiss Hammond (london, 1784), p. 84. Matilda, or the Efforts of Virtue (London, 1785), vol. 1 , pp. 63-4. 240

Notes 11

12

13 14 15

16 17 18

19 OJ 21

22

23 24 z,

'Modesty! Sacred offspring of sensibility and reason! - true delicacy of mind!'; Wollstonecraft, in Todd (ed.), Rights ofWoman, p. 198. For Wordsworth's use of gothic conventions in the 1798 advertisement to Lyrical Ballads, see Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic, p. 115. The Liberal American (London, 1785), vol. 1 , p. 171. The III Effects of a Rash Vow (London, 1789), vol. 2, p. 207. Cited in Garside, Raven and Schowerling (eels), The English Novel, vol. 1, p. 459. Todd (ed.), The Works of Mary Wollstoneuaft, p. 83. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, p. 225. Published anonymously, a frontispiece links Olivia with novels published in the 1770s with T. Becket. By 1797, Bonhote had published three additional novels, all with Lane. Olivia; or, Deserted Bride (London, 1787), vol. 1 , p. 146. Edward and Sophia (London, 1787), vol. 2, p. 52. Mackenzie published three novels with Lane between 1789 and 1791 and an additional five from 1795 to 1802. Prior to Minerva's zenith, Mackenzie published with both Lane and other publishers, and in 1809, with Longman. Miss Pilkington is identified in an 1814 circulating­ library catalogue as the author of four Minerva novels, all published between 1790 and 1802; see Blakey, The Minerva Press, p. 309. This scheming lady plants a few well-timed clues, all of which are designed to convince Stanley that Maria is having an affair with his closest friend, Colonel Belville. At the news that Stanley has fled to the Continent after mortally wounding Belville in a duel, Maria falls into intennittent madness. By the end of the novel the interfering lady has committed suicide, Belville has recovered from his wounds, and Maria and Stanley have reunited. Burton-Wood (London, 1783), vol. 2, p. 139. Delia, a Pathetic and Interesting Tale (London, 1790), vol. 1, p. 135. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Genderfrom the Greeks to Freud (London, 1990), pp. 200-1. Chapter 3

1 2 3

Kelly (ed.), Mary and The Wrongs of Woman, p. 67. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, p. 96. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, p. 281. 241

Notes 4

5 6

7 8 9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16 17

18

19

I agree with Barbara Taylor, who identifies erotic love as central to Wollstonecraft's revolutionary vision; Wollstonecrafi and the Feminist Imagination, p. 112. Watson, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, p. 40. In 1797Wollstonecraft focused her professional energies on her novel, which included reviewing mostly fiction so as to improve her own art. As Gary Kelly explains, 'She must have felt that if someone were to publish a good feminist novel it would have to be herself'; Revolutionary Feminism, p. 206. Lyrical Ballads 1 798 and 1 800, p. 176. Lyrical Ballads 1 798 and 1 800, p. 172. See Blakey; Minerva, pp. 76-7, for the risks of'printing for the author' . 'Introduction', in Eliza Fenwick, Secresy; or, The Ruin on the Rock, ed. Isobel Grundy, second edn (peterborough, Ont., 1998), p. 9. See Watson, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, p. 41. Eliza Fenwick, Secresy, p. 59. From Wordsworth's 1802 additions, in Lyrical Ballads, 1 798 and 1 800, p. 421. Watson, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, p. 44. Bawarshi, Genre & the Invention of the Writer, p. 7. Eleanor Ty (ed.), Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Oxford, 2009), p. 121. Elizabeth Hamilton makes fun of the fantastical quality of this love affair in her satirical novel, Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) by remodelling Emma Courtney into the physically repulsive Bridgetina. As Katherine Binhamrner describes it, 'Bridgetina is never actually in danger of being seduced because her vanity and repulsive appearance preclude sexual advances'; 'The Persistence of Reading: Governing Female Novel-Reading in Memoirs of Emma Courtney and Memoirs of Modern Philosophers', Eighteenth-Century Life, 2712 (2003), p. 15. By contrast, Binhamrner (who proposes that Hays takes up critical discourse about undiscerning female readers so as to demonstrate that authors are teaching readers what to read and how to read) does not distinguish between Emma's speedy, mindless reading of circulating­ library novels and her perusal of Rousseau's singular novel; 'The Persistence of Reading', p. 2. Norton explains, 'scholars have been reluctant to take the author at her word that the novel is intended to exemplify the " errors of sensi­ bility"'; 'Emma Courtney, Feminist Ethics, and the Problem of 242

Notes

3J

21

22

23 24 z, 26 Z! 28 29

30 31

32

33 34

Autonomy', Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 54/3 (2013), p. 308. B. M. Norton, 'Emma Courtney, Feminist Ethics, and the Problem of Autonomy', p. 303. Godwin includes an excerpt of a letter from Wollstonecraft detailing plans for the novel immediately after the 'author's preface', The Wrongs ofWoman, ed. Kelly, p. 68; also see Godwin's appendix, p. 163. Wollstonecraft, 'Author's preface' to The Wrongs of Woman, ed. Kelly, p. 66. Poovey; The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, p. 96. Watson, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, p. 40. But see Neiman, 'Female Authors', p. 279. Watson, The Domestic Revolution, p. 1 1 . Watson, The Domestic Revolution, p. 10. Kelly (ed.), Mary and The Wrongs of Woman, p. 85. A. K. Mellor, 'Righting the Wrongs ofWoman: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria', Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 19 (1996), p. 416. See Taylor, Wollstoneaajt and the Feminist ImagilUltion, pp. 238--44;Johnson, Equivocal Beings, p. 67; Wallace, Revolutionary Subjects in the English Jacobin' Novel, pp. 65-6; Laurie Langbauer, 'An Early Romance: Motherhood and Women's Writing in Mary Wollstonecraft's Novels', in Anne Mellor (ed.) Romanticism and Feminism (Bloomington, 1988), pp. 208-19. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, pp. 264-5. Hays may be following Wollstonecraft's model for her second novel, The Victim ofPujudice, 1799. The heroine, Mary, believes she is beloved by the hero but Pelham all too easily forgets her, and after a series of injustices and setbacks (including fmancial ruin, rape and the discovery that her own mother had fallen into prostitution), Mary loses all hope in life, her only pleasure being her rapidly approaching death. For Wollstonecraft's mentoring of Hays earlier in the decade, see Waters, British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism, pp. 22, 11 1-17. An 1814 Minerva Library Catalogue identifies Miss Pilkington as the author of four Minerva novels (1790, 1793, 1798, 1802) and Miss Taylor as the author of five (1799, 1799, 1802, 1804, 1806). Rosina (London, 1793), vol. 3, p. 168. Spenser's poetical novel reads much like the 'providential' novels popular at Minerva's zenith, my focus in Section Two. 243

Notes 35

36

37 38 39

E. Clery, Women's Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley (Horndon, 2000) , p. 68. Like Spenser's manuscript, circulating-library novels were not treated as valued objects - rather, multiple readings left them dog-eared and worn, if not lost altogether, Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction, pp. 96-7. Josephine (London, 1799), vol. 1 , pp. 187-8. Rosalind (London, 1799), vol. 1 , pp. 254-5. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, ed. Rosalind Ballaster (Cambridge, 2011), p. 95.

S E C T ION T W O Overview 1

2

The hero of Fanny Burney's The Wanderer, 1814, frequently uses this phrase when musing about the identity of the unnamed, friendless but strikingly beautiful and graceful heroine who has mysteriously arrived on a boat from France. Burney's use of this fonnula is outside the scope of this project, but her choice of the commoner-to-nobleman supports the argument that this formula was an integral part of the 1790s Revolution debate. Burney sets her commoner-to-nobleman theme in 1790s England against the backdrop of the violence of the French Revolution, and attributes an anti-heroine's mistaken ideas to Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman. For the eighteenth-century 'cultural revolution', see Kelly; RevolutiolUlry Feminism, p. 1 . Chapter 4

1

2

Edrmmd Burke, in R4fections on the Revolution in FralUe by Echnlllld Burke and The Rights ofMan by Thomas Paine (New York, 1973), p. 49. Clara Reeve's revision of The Castle of Otranto, The Old English Baron, 1788 (first published in 1777 as The Champion of Virtue) , sets another early example. Much is made of the hero, Edmund's, seemingly low parentage, while his uncommon merit and virtue point to his noble origins, as do supernatural signs, though more subdued thanWalpole's. 244

Notes 3 4

5

6

7

s

9 10

11

12

13

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights ofMen, ed. Todd, p. 29. 'What is Poetry?', in Thomas J. Collins and Vivienne J. Rundle (eds) , Wai Ying Lee and Kirsten Munro (assistant eds), The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory (Peterborough, Ont., 2005), p. 1216. Burke's argument originates in the settlement discussions post1688; he is largely responsible for its resurgence in the 1790s. See E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1964), p. 78; also Tom Furniss, Edmund Burke's Aesthetic Ideology: Language, Gender, and Political Economy in Revolution (Cambridge, 1993), p. 106. See Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1982), p. 100; also Jean Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth­ Century England (London, 1956), pp. 163-8; Douglas Hay, 'Property, Authority, and Criminal Law' , in Douglas Hay (ed.), Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth- Century England (NewYork, 1975), pp. 19-22. See lain Hampsher-Monk, 'Reflections on the Revolution in France', in David Dwan and Christopher Insole (eels), The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke (Cambridge, 2012), p. 198. See Stephen Blakemore, Burke and the Fall of Language: The French Revolution as Linguistic Event (Hanover, NH, 1988), p. 3; also Stephen Browne, Edmund Burke and the Discourse of Virtue (Tuscaloosa, 1993), pp. 2-4; Christopher Reid, 'Burke's Tragic Muse: Sarah Siddons and the "Feminization" of the Rtifledions' , in Stephen Blakemore, Burke and the French Revolution: Bicentennial Essays (Athens, 1992), pp. 1-27. Plato, Republic, tr. Joe Sachs (N ewburyport, MA., 2007) , p. 154 (459E). William Godwin,An Enquiry Concerning PoliticalJustice, ed. Mark Philp (Oxford, 2013), p. 258. William Godwin, in Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, with Selections .from Godwin's Other Wrirings, ed. K. Codell Carter (Oxford, 1971), p. 4, my emphasis. M. Philp, 'Godwin, Thelwali, and the Means of Progress', in Robert Maniques and Victoria Myers (eds) , Godwinian Moments: From the Enlightenment to Romanticism (Toronto, 2011), p. 67. Whereas D. H. Monro had to challenge nineteenth- and early to mid-twentieth-century renderings of Godwin as cold and self-centred (Godwin's Moral Philosophy:An Interpretation of William Godwin (Folcroft, 1969), p. 7), critics now generally agree that Godwin later revises his 245

Notes

14

15 16 17

18

19 20 21 22 Z3 24

view on emotion, particularly in his novels. See, for example, William Brewer's introduction to St. Leon (peterborough, Ont., 2006) for the argument that Wollstonecraft probably impacted Godwin's thinking, pp. 12-16. In an author's statement to St. Leon, Godwin retracts his cool treatment of emotion in Political Justice: 'I apprehend domestic and private affections inseparable from the nature of man', and as not being 'incompatible' with justice, p. 52. Blenheim Lodge (London, 1787), vol. 2, p. 91.As mentioned in Chapter 1, Lane's 'by a lady' novels appear most frequently in the mid- to late 1780s. Blenheim Lodge was advertised as 'by a lady'; the remaining three novels referenced were published anonymously and without female-identifiers. Adeline; or the Orphan (London, 1790), vol. 2, p. 9. The Child of Providence (London, 1792), vol. 1 , p. 163. The Fille de Chambre (Baltimore, 1795), p. 6 1 . Originally published by Lane in 1792. Burney, of course, heavily relies on this fonnula in The Wanderer. For working heroines in early Minerva novels, see Persiana, Nymph of the Sea (1791), Fille de Chambre (1792), Mariamne (1793), and Belleville Lodge (1793). With the exception of Belleville Lodge (which features a shepherdess-turned-noblewoman) , these heroines live genteel lives until their dependent status becomes a problem (e.g. the adoptive parent's death, the small-mindedness of others). See in particular Persiana - this heroine sings ballads on the street and joins a strolling company. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, p. 143. Though Scott's title is 'Millenium' (and not 'Millennium') Hall. Anna Melvil (London, 1792), vol. 1, p. 25. Todd (ed.), Rights of Woman, p. 195. Kelly; Revolutionary Feminism, p. 1 . The novel is set in the American Revolution, and Rebecca's uncle is a loyalist. Rebecca and the family she works for are treated as prisoners, so as not to collude with other English citizens, and are then sent back to England (Rowson had much the same experience in 1777, when fIfteen years old; though born in England she lived in Boston with her family from 1766 to 1778. See Marion Rust, introduction to Charlotte Temple (N ewYork, 2011), p. xx) . The setting seems incidental to Rowson's stated project in her preface - but American settings or 246

Notes

z 26 Zl

28 29

30

31

32

33

characters do appear in later providential novels, to be discussed in Chapter 7. Ellen Rushford (London, 1794), vol. 1, p. 164. Todd (ed.), The Rights of Men, p. 21. Rights ofMan, Volume 2 (Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg), https:// www.gutenberg.orglfilesI374213742-hI3742-h.htm. Accessed 31 March 2018. Todd (ed.), Rights of Men, p. 21. Ellen's marriage is like Marianne Dashwood's to Colonel Brandon ­ but, in contrast to Austen, the author of Ellen Rushford ultimately endorses Ellen's first choice, refusing any easy distinction between romantic love and 'social love' . Stephen Blakemore, Crisis in Representation: Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams, and the Rewriting of the French Revolution (Madison, 1997), pp. 89-101; also pp. 45--{). While there is no mention of what becomes of Fitz-Aubin's property, the author represents giving rather than accumulating property as a sign of noble-mindedness, e.g. Ellen returns her late husband's estate to his family as she does not need it, vol. 2, p. 139; Henderson often assists friends in financial need, vol. 2, p. 70. A Butler's Diary; Or, the History of Miss Eggerton (London, 1792), vol. 2, pp. 57--1l. Watson, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, p. 108. Chapter 5

1

2

3

For the competing definitions ofliterature in the 1790s, see Keen, The Crisis of Literature, pp. 10-11 . See Philip, 'Godwin, Thelwali, and the Means of Progress', p. 75. For the argument that Godwin viewed the rapid growth of radical journals in the 1790s with trepidation, see Garrett A. Sullivan, "'A Story to be Hastily Gobbled Up":"Caleb Williams" and Print Culture', Studies in Romanticism, 32/3 (1993), pp. 329-30. In 1792, Paine had been prosecuted for The Rights of Man; in 1793, Parliament had debated over whether or not Godwin should be prosecuted for PoliticalJustice, and in 1794, habeas corpus was suspended and several of Godwin's closest friends were arrested for treason; Kelly, Jawbin, The English Novel pp. 1 G-l1. 247

Notes 4

5

6

7

8

10

11 12

13 14

15 16 17

18

'A Note on the Text', in Gary Handwerk and A.A. Markley (eds.) Caleb Williams (Peterborough, Ont., 2000), p. 5 1 . The preface was not published until 1796, in Things as They Are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams, second edn (London, 1796), pp. v-vi. Things As They Are; or the Adventures of Caleb Williams (London, 1794), vol. 1 , p. 1 1 . P. Clemit, The Godwinian Novel.·The Rational Fictions of Godwin, Brockden Brown, Mary Shelley (Oxford, 1993), p. 45. Clemit, The Godwinian Novel, p. 47.The essay was designed for a second volwne of the Enquirer: Rtjledions on Education, Manners, and Literature (1797) but was not published until 1988. See Jon Klancher, 'Godwin and the Republican Romance: Genre, Politics, and Contingency in Cultural History', Modern Language Quarterly, 5612 (1995), p. 146. William Godwin, 'Of History and Romance', http://wuw.english.upenn. edu 1---mgamerIEtexts 1godwin. history. html. My view advances Clifford Siskin's argument that Godwin masculin­ izes the romance ('Eighteenth-Century Periodicals and the Romantic Rise of the Novel', Studies in the Novel, 26/1 of2, The Romantic Novel (1994), pp. 38-9), but also Klancher's counterpoint that Godwinjoins Wollstonecraft and other feminist revolutionaries in their radical revisions of the romance genre ('Godwin', p. 161). Godwin's apparent indifference to love in Things As They Are, the common theme of the truly 'feminized' romance, the popular romance, shows how far removed he is from this genre as it operates in use. Handwerk and Markley, 'Introduction', p. 43. Tilottama Rajan, 'Wollstonecraft and Godwin: Reading the Secrets of the Political Novel' , Studies in Romanticism, 2712 (1988), 224 (Rajan refers to the chapter in Godwin's Enquirer, 'Of Choice of Reading'). Tilottama Rajan, 'Wollstonecraft and Godwin', p. 224. See, for example, Handwerk and Markley, 'Introduction', pp. 33-4; also 43-4. Political Jusrice (1793 edn), p. 155. Wordsworth,'Preface (1800) ' , in Lyrical Ballads, 1 798 and 1800, p. 175. See Kenneth Johnston, The Hidden Wordsworth (New York, 2000) , p. 763. fu a point of contrast, Susan Manley sees Wordsworth's shift from spontaneity to 'blind' and 'mechanical' impulse as a logical gap that 248

Notes

19

3J

indicates his indecision or discomfort as to how he will carry out his stated project; Language, Custom and Nation in the 1 790s: Locke, Tooke, Wordsworth, Edgeworth (Aldershot, 2007), p. 117. J. Chandler, Wordsworth's Second Nature:A Study of the Poetry and Politics (Chicago, 1984), p. 36. Compared to other men the Poet has: a more lively sensibility, enthusiasm and tenderness a greater knowledge of hwnan nature and a more compre­ hensive soul Also, more than ordinary men, he:

21 22 Z3

24 z 26 7J

2S

29 Yl

rejoices in the spirit of life in him is affected by absent things as if they were present conjures in himself passions that resemble those produced from real events expresses what he thinks and feels, especially those thoughts and feelings that arise in him without immediate external excitement William Wordsworth. The Major Works, pp. 603-4. William Wordsworth. The Major Works, p. 606. William Wordsworth. The Major Works, p. 604. Hofkosh uses this phrase to describe a 'culture' of prolific circulation; this culture supports a discourse that construes authorship as either (implicitly) male, original, and poetic or (implicitly) female, and repro­ ductive or imitative, 'The Writer's Ravishment: Women and the Romantic Author - the Example of Byron', in Anne K. Mellor (ed.), Romanticism and Feminism (Bloomington, 1988), p. 98. Mark Philp (ed.), 1793 version, p. 405. See Gary Handwerk and A.A. Markley (eds.), Caleb Williams, p. 436. Kelly, The English Jawbin Novel, p. 190. G. Handwerk, 'Of Caleb's Guilt and Godwin's Truth', EIB, 60/4 (1993), pp. 947-51 . "'A Plausible Tale": William Godwin's Things As They Are', European Romantic Review, 25/5 (2014), p. 59. Kelly, The EnglishJawbin Novel, pp. 1-19. Handwerk, 'Of Caleb's Guilt', p. 952. 249

Notes 31 32

33 34

35 36

Things as They Are, second edn, pp. v-vi. Things As They Are; or the Adventures of Caleb Williams, third edn (London, 1797), vol. 1 , pp. 4-5. Things As They Are, third edn, vol. 2, pp. 160-1. Kate Ellis, The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domesnc Ideology (Urbana, 1989), pp. 3-7. Rajan, 'Wollstonecraft and Godwin', p. 249. 'Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802) ' , in William Wordsworth: The Major Works, p. 604. Chapter 6

1

2

3 4

5 6 7

s 9

Until recently; Meeke was misidentified as 'Mary Meeke' andJacson's novels were falsely attributed to another Minerva author, Alethea Lewis. See Simon MacDonald, 'Identifying Mrs Meeke: Another Burney Family Novelist', The Review ofEnglish Studies, 641265 (2013), 367--85, and Joan Percy, 'An Unrecognized Novelist: Frances Jacson (1754-1842)', British Library Journal 23/1 (1997), 81-97. Arma Maria Bennett, The Beggar Girl and her Benefoctors (London, 1797), vol. 5, p. 368. K. Codell Carter (ed.), Polincal Jusnce, p. 38. Burke, Rtjtections on the Revolution in France, p. 50. As Mark Philp explains, Godwin regarded government as drawing most individuals into servitude; Godwin's PoliticalJustice (Ithaca, NY, 1986), pp. 2-3. For the servant as a key figure in the French Revolution debate, see H. T. Dickinson, British Radicalism and the French Revolution, 1 789-1815 (New York, 1985), p. 228; also Sarah Jordan, The Anxieties of Idleness: Idleness in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture (Lewisburg, 2003), p. 47. Mark Philp (ed.), PolincalJusnce, p. 22. K. Codell Carter (ed.), Polincal Jusnce, p. 254. Meeke, who published exclusively with Minerva, debuted with Count St. Blancard and went on to publish another twenty-five novels over the next three decades, easily making her the Press's most prolific author. Grenby; The Anti-Jacobin Novel, p. 169. W J. Reader, Professional Men: The Rise of the Professional Classes in Nineteenth-Century England (London, 1966), pp. 16-21, 43. 250

Notes 10

11 12 13

14

15

16

17 18 19 3J 21

22

23

Elizabeth Meeke, Count St. Blancard, or, the Prejudiced Judge (London, 1795), vol. 1, p. 15. Burke, R41ections on the Revolution in France, p. 100. Burke, R41ections on the Revolution in France, pp. 10l. De Ransai has asked Dubois to send to I taly for proof of his recent residence there (this would disprove Champagne's charge that Dubois had frequented Mademoiselle de Ceare's bedchamber over the past two years) . Mandal, The Determined Author, p. 1 1 ; also pp. 24, 87, 95; also Joan Percy; 'An Unrecognized Novelist', p. 89. Cathy Davidson, Revolution and the Word: The Rise ofthe Novel in Amenca, expanded edn (Oxford, 2004) , p. 200. Charlotte's resonance with an American audience substantiates Eve Tavor Barmet's thought that even asAmerican authors exported gothic conventions popularized by British authors, 'these generic similarities made national differences in habits, manners, daily incidents, and sentiments all the more evident'; 'Charles Brockden Brown and England', p. 152. By contrast, in Pille de Chambre (discussed in Chapter 5) Rowson appears to tailor her novel to her British audience. Set primarily in England, Rowson works closely with providential conven­ tions, which make possible the great surprise of her novel - that the heroine's beloved is a commoner, like her. For Rowson's efforts to appeal to both British and American readers, see Melissa Homestead and Camryn Hansen, 'Susanna Rowson's Transatlantic Career', Early American Literature, 45/3 (2010), pp. 624-8. Frances Jacson, Disobedience (London, 1797), voL 1 , pp. 11-12. The Determined Author, p. 1 1 ; also pp. 24, 87, 95. Percy; 'An Unrecognized Novelist', p. 95. Percy; 'An Unrecognized Novelist', p. 90. For Hermsprong as a Jacobin novel, see Kelly, The EnglishJacobin Novel, p. 58; also Wallace, Revolutionary Subjects in the English Jacobin' Novel, pp. 87-91. Hermsprong; or, man as he is not, ed.Vaughan Wilkins (NewYork, 1951), p. 43. Marilyn Butler,JaneAusten and the War of Ideas, p. 84. Also see Patrick Parrinder, Nation and Novel: the English Novel from its Origins to the Present Day (Oxford, 2006), p. 192; Kelly, The English Jacobin Novel, p. 40. 251

Notes 24

z, 26

7J 28 29 30 31

In 'Robert Bage's Novel Merchandise', Hudson reads Bage's use of popular conventions more generously than do critics interested in his radical politics, providing a fresh view of his relationship to other Minerva authors, pp. 171-92. I add that Bage's radical politics falter in his use of the commoner-to-nobleman formula. Watson, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, pp. 69-73. For this reorientation, see James Averill, Wordsworth and the Poetry of Human Suffering (Ithaca, NY, 1980), pp. 21-3. The Heir of Montague (London, 1797/8), vol. 2, p. 114. Todd (ed.), Rights of Men, p. 54. Wordsworth, 'Preface (1800)', in Lyrical Ballads, 1 798 and 1 800, p. 174. Kelly; Revolutionary Feminism, p. 1 . J. S. Mill, 'What is Poetry?', p. 1216.

S E C T ION T HREE Overview 1

2

3

4 5

Franz Potter notes that by the 1810s, critics commonly represented the market as so oversaturated that gothic novels were no longer in demand, concluding that 'recycled' conventions are evidence of the gothic's continued popularity as well as their relation to evolving discourses. See The History if Gothic Publishing, 1800-1 835 (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 7-8. Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic, pp. 90-4. Also see Angela Wright and Dale Townshend, who explain that, 'both the "Gothic" and the "Romantic" are the critical by-products of a complex process of literary canon formation, one begun in the culture of periodical review during the 1790s and early 1800s'; 'Gothic and Romantic: An Historical Overview', in Angela Wright and Dale Townshend (eds) , Romantic Gothic:An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh, 2016), p. 4. 'Meta-Genre', in Richard M. Coe, Lorelei Lindgard and Tatiana Teslenko (eds) , The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre (Cresskill, NJ, 2002), pp. 202-3. Giltrow; 'Meta-Genre', p. 303. See in particular Alan Weinberg and Timothy Webb (eds) , The Unfamiliar Shelley (Farnham, 2009); also Michael O'Neill, 'Introduction', 252

Notes

6

in Michael O'Neill and Anthony Howe (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Percy B. Shelley (Oxford, 2013), pp. 1-9. See, for example, Tilottama Rajan, Romantic Narrative: Shelley, Hays, Codwin, WollstonelTaft (Baltimore, 2010), pp. 46-81 ; also Peter Finch, 'Monstrous Inheritance: The Sexual Politics of Genre in Shelley's St. Irvyne', Keats-Shelley Journal: Keats, Shelley, Byron, Hunt and their Circles, 48 (1999), 35--{)8. Chapter 7

1

2 3 4

s 6

7

s

9 10 11 12 13 14

A Defence ofPoetry, in Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill (eds), Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works (Oxford, 2009), p. 697. Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, p. 680. Rajan, Romantic Narrative, p. 52. Stephen Behrendt, 'Introduction' to Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne (peterborough, Ont., 2002) , p. 18. Behrendt, 'Introduction', p. 13. Behrendt takes stock of this trend; 'Introduction', Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, p. 1 1 . 'Female Gothic', as coined by Ellen Moer i n 1974, see Carol Margaret Davison's Cothic Literature 1 764-1824 (Cardiff, 2009), pp. 90-1. Other resources include Kate Ellis's classic study; The Contested Castle and Diane Hoeveler's Gothic Feminism: The Professionalism of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontes (pennsylvania, 1998). For the 'male' gothic, see Ann Williams, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (Chicago, 1995). While 'male' and 'female' gothic are frequently used terms, I choose 'masculine' and 'feminine' to draw attention to the text in question rather than the author (Zofioya being a case in point). Emma McEvoy draws a similar conclusion in describing The Monk as 'a novel of bad faith - and parody'. See 'Introduction', in Howard Anderson (ed.), Matthew Lewis, The Monk (Oxford, 1995), p. xxii. Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic, p. 82; also p. 80. Gamer, Romanticism and the Gothic, p. 75. Lewis, The Monk, p. 18. Ellis, The Contested Castle, pp. 136, 143. Adriana Craciun (ed.), Zofioya (peterborough, Ont., 1997), p. 40. Lilla is the feminine ideal, and Victoria affects masculinity; Diane Hoeveler, 'Charlotte Dacre's Zofioya: A Case Study in Miscegenation 253

Notes

15

16

17

18

19

20

21 22

23

as Sexual and Racial Nausea', European Romantic Review, 8/2 (1997), p. 185. Beatriz Gonzalez Moreno, 'Gothic Excess and Aesthetic Arnbiguity in Charlotte Dacre's Zo}loya', Women's Writing, 14/3 (2007) , p. 432. Emma Clery notes that despite her capacity for strong feeling,Victoria does not possess a 'genius' for poetry or music like other gothic hero­ ines, most notably Radcliffe's; Women's Gothic, p. 1 1 1 . My reading illuminates a different point of connection between Dacre's heroine and Romantic poetics. Adriana Craciun explains that Victoria becomes more masculine as the novel progresses; 'Introduction' to Zofioya, p. 10. To the contrary, it is in the first part of the novel that Victoria's masculine strength of mind enables her to shape her own destiny. Dacre severely punishes her heroine for her llllconventionality, forcing her into a more feminine mould as she becomes subject to her desire for Henriquez, at which point Dacre introduces Zofloya. Most critics agree that Zofloya reflects racist discourse. See Sarah D. Schotland, 'The Slave's Revenge: The Terror in Charlotte Dacre's Zofloya', in Julie Chapelle, Karnille Stone Stanton and Kirsten Saxton, Spectacle, Sex, and Property in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (New York, 2015), pp. 159-76; Hoeveler, 'Charlotte Dacre's Zo}loya', pp. 185-99; also Craciun, 'Introduction' to Zofloya, pp. 18-19. For a cOllllterargument seeArme Mellor, 'Interracial Sexual Desire in Charlotte Dacre's Zo}loya', European Romantic Review 1312 (2002), 169-73. Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, ed. Stephen Behrendt (peterborough, Ont., 2002), p. 79. Tiljar Mazzeo, Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period (philadelphia, 2007), p. xi. Mazzeo, Plagiarism and Literary Property, p. 3. For a list of scenes, see Walter Peck, Shelley: His Life and Works: 1 8911954 (Boston, 1927), vol. 2, Appendix A, pp. 305-13. Despite the extensiveness of the list, Peck does not analyse these findings or take account of Shelley's reuse of Dacre's actual language. Similarly, Hugh Roberts argues that Shelley 'repeatedly urges the reader to see his texts as existing within a noisy pre-existing universe of circulating poems, stories, manuscripts, and even newspaper accounts which inevitably shape his own writing, and the reader's potential responses to that writing'. See 'Noises on the Communicative 254

Notes

24 25 26 Zl 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36 'Sl 3S 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46

Strategies of Shelley's Prefaces', in Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb (eds) , The Unfamiliar Shelley (Farnham, 2009), p. 94. Stephen. C. Behrendt, Shelley and his Audience (Lincoln, 1989), p. 41. Cited in Behrendt, Shelley and his Audience, p. 47. Wordsworth, 'Preface (1800) ', in Lyrical Ballads, 1 798 and 1800, p. 175. Shelley, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, p. 238. Finch, 'Monstrous Inheritance', pp. 43-4. Fimch, 'Monstrous Inheritance', p. 59. Finch, 'Monstrous Inheritance', p. 68. Rajan, Romantic Narrative, p. 46. Rajan, Romantic Narrative, p. xvi. For Shelley and the 'science ofthe mind', see Timothy Clark, Embodying Revolution: The Figure of the Poet in Shelley (Oxford, 1989), pp. 8-10. This turn inward is another marker of the 'masculine' gothic. See Juliann Reenor, 'Introduction' to The Female Gothic (Montreal, 1983), p. 1 1 . Wordsworth,'Preface (1800) ' , in Lyrical Ballads, 1 798 and 1800, p. 175. Rajan, Romantic Narrative, p. xvi. Rajan, Romantic Narrative, p. 3. Garner, Romanticism and the Gothic, pp. 116-23. Shelley, 'Defence of Poetry', p. 680. Shelley, 'Defence of Poetry', p. 685. Shelley, 'Defence of Poetry', pp. 699-700. Shelley, 'Defence of Poetry', p. 676. RaymondWilliarns, Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977), pp. 128-35. Shelley, 'Defence of Poetry', p. 701. See Ferris, TheAchievement ofLiterary Authority, p. 43; Hofkosh, 'Writer's Ravishment', p. 98; also Garner, Romanticism and the Gothic, pp. 54-6. But see Anne Hatton's Sicilian Mysteries, or the Fortress of Del Vechii (1812), published by Henry Colburn. Following Lewis and Dacre, sexual passion drives central characters - including women - to desperate acts of violence and hypocrisy. Following Radcliffe, the supernatural is explained. Chapter 8

1

2

In Zachary Leader and Michael O'Neill (eds) , Perey Bysshe Shelley, lines 151-4, p. 97. Warkfold Castle. A Tale (London, 1802), vol. 3, pp. 147-8. 255

Notes 3

4

5

6

7

s

9 10

11

For this debate, see Kyle Grimes, 'Private Visions/Public Responsibilities: The Alastor Volwne', in Darby Lewis (ed.), A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle's Utopian Project (Lanham, 2003), p. 66. G. Kim Blank, Wordsworth's Influence on Shelley: A Study of Poetic Authority (New York, 1988), pp. 50-4. Mellor, Romanticism and Gender, pp. 17-29. Also see Thomas Frosch, who explains that when Shelley envisages 'the imagining of an ideal woman', he is also writing more generally about 'the prime Romantic idea of the realization of the imagined idea'; Shelleyan Eros:The Rhetoric of Romantic Love (princeton, 1990), p. 31, and William Ulmer, who reads Alastor's sentimental decline as 'an ironic triumph', as his perse­ verance is 'an index to greatness of soul'; Shelleyan Eros, p. 31. For twentieth-century scholarship that made this inward turn central to canonical Romanticism, as well as to recent challenges to this scholarship, see Zimmennan, Romanticism, Lyricism, and History, pp. 1-31. In line with these recent challenges, Grimes reminds us that Alastor is part of a larger volume that includes a revision of the notably political Queen Mab. So paired, Alastor's inward turn is designed to engage readers in a 'dialectical meditation on the social role of poetry'; 'Private Visions/Public Responsibilities', p. 67. It has been outside the scope of this project to research Minerva novels translated from the original (usually French or German) , but Husband Hunters!!! could be an interesting starting point. The countess preswnes Lucius is already familiar with her work: 'Ahnost all my works have been translated into English: have you never read them? I imagined I was very well known by every English reader'; vol. 2, p. 221. Harvey debuted with Minerva and published ten novels between 1802 and 1828. She did not return to Minerva until 1816, with Brougham Castle, though in 1814 Ne\NIllan reprinted Memoirs of an Author, as well as Ethelia (1810), another Longman publication. (Harvey published seven additional novels with other presses between 1806 and 1823). Auberry Stanhope: or, Memoirs ofan Author (London, 1814), vol. 1, p. 23. Jerome McGann, The Romantic Ideology:A Critical Investigation (Chicago, 1983), p. 13;Andrew Bennett, Romantic Poets and the Culture of Posterity (Cambridge, 1999), p. 3. 'Essay, Supplementary to the Preface to Poems (1815)', in Stephen Gill (ed.), William Wordsworth: The Major Works (Oxford, 2008), p. 659; also Woodmansee The Author, Art, and the Market, pp. 37-9. 256

Notes 12 13

14 15

16

17 18

19

20 21

Giltrow, 'Meta-Genre', p. 303. Davenport debuted in 1813 with Colburn and published seven additional novels over the next fIfteen years, all with Minerva. What we know of Davenport's life suggests that she might have modelled Courtney after her husband, a professional poet who published his own literary journal. When the couple separated, Davenport struggled to earn a living for herself and her children, making multiple appeals to the Royal Literary Fund. See Louise Watkins, "'Author Sketch'" of Selina Davenport, Corinne, Corvey Women Writers on the Web, 1 796- 1 83s, http;llextra.shu. ac.uklconrylaadavenportlaadavenbio.htm. Retrieved 31 October 2010. The Hypocrite: or, The ModernJanus:A Novel (London, 1814), vol. 4,p. 195. The original frontispiece claims an earlier publication as an 1804 Minerva novel (The Aunt and the Niece), but there is no additional evidence that the author published with Minerva. As I suggest above, the author or publisher may be enlisting Minerva as a sign of this new title's commercial appeal. Lyndon Dominique, 'Introduction' to The Woman of Colour (peterborough, Ont., 2007) , p. 31. Dominique, 'Introduction' to The Woman of Colour, p. 39. SeeVictoria Barnett-Woods, 'Models of Morality: The Bildllllgsroman and Social Reform in the Female American and the Woman of Colour', Women's Studies, 4517 (2016), pp. 612-22; Rebecca Woomer, 'The republic of letters: epistolarity, the public sphere, and the rise of the novel' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2010), pp. 141-53;Jennifer DeVere Brody; Impossible Purities; Blackness, Femininity, and Victorian Culture (Durham, NC, 1998), pp. 16-26; Denys Van Renen, "'The Temple of Folly": Transatlantic "Nature", Nabobs, and Environmental Degradation in The Woman of Colour', in Ben P. Robertson (ed.) , Romantic Sustainability; Endurance and the Natural World, 1 780-1830 (Lanham, 2015), p. 158. Other critics locate the novel in various other traditions. See Dominique for a two-pronged protest tradition (West Indian and white British feminist); Barnett-Woods for the developing genre of the Bildungsroman; Woomer for the eighteenth-century novel of sensibility, both in England and America; and DeVere Brody for Victorian representations of women of mixed race. See Zimmerman, Romanticism, Lyricism, and History, pp. 1-37. Mill, 'What is Poetry?', p. 2012. 257

Notes 22

23

24

z,

26 Zl

2S 29

30 31 32

33 34

As Woomer

suggests, the epistolary fonn remains useful to a writer on the margins as late as 1808, allowing the author to focus on the protagonist's racialized identity, 'The republic of letters', p. 142. Dominique, 'Introduction' to The Woman of Colour, pp. 37-9; Barnett­ Woods, 'Models of Morality', pp. 621-2. Sara Salih, Representing Mixed Race in Jamaica and England from the Abolition Era to the Present (New York, 2011), p. 80. Lisa Wood, 'The Evangelical Novel', in J. A. Downie (ed.) , The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Oxford, 2016), p. 521. The Woman of Colour (Peterborough, Ont., 2007), p. 188. Olivia's mixed race is in contrast to Dido's blackness, as is her upbring­ ing (genteel) and language (Dido speaks in broken English) - but as Dominique contends, the author makes an effort to connect the two women through their experiences with racism; 'Introduction' to Woman of Colour, pp. 30-1; also p. 37. Also see DeVere Brody, who connects Olivia's overseas journey to her mother's on the middle passage; Impossible Purities, p. 23. Impossible Purities, p. 25. Moira Ferguson, Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834 (New York, 1992), p. 19. Wood, 'The Evangelical Novel', p. 527. Wood, Modes of Discipline, p. 124. As a point of contrast, the mixed-race hero of the Minerva novel, Yamboo: or the North American Slave: a tale (Minerva, 1812), is no one's love object.Yamboo, like Olivia, has a white father, but his father had never claimed him and had deserted his mother when he was an infant. Most of the novel is set in England, and Yamboo becomes Europeanized as he is taken up by two different benefactors. To Yamboo's shock, and probably to many readers' (despite the author's use of providential clues) ,Yamboo 's father is the second of these men. The novel concludes with a reference to Yamboo's love interest, Emily Beresford, the daughter of his first benefactor: 'her image engrossed his whole heart, [but] he would have deemed it profanation to have breathed her name - of so pure, so exalted a nature was his sentiments to her'; vol. 3, pp. 207-8. Yamboo is happy to live near Emily, now married to her own lover. Wood, Modes of Discipline, pp. 1 1-29. Alastor, lines 289-90, p. 100. 258

Notes Afterword 1 2 3 4 5

6

7 s 9

10 11 12

13

14

15

Mill, 'What is Poetry?', p. 2014. Blakey; The Minerva Press, p. 1. Mill, 'What is Poetry?', p. 2012. Mill, 'What is Poetry?', p. 2014. See Marion Thain, 'Victorian Lyric Pathology and Phenomenology' , in Marion Thain (ed.), The Lyric Poem: Formations and Traniformations (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 156-60. Sarah Zimmerman, Romanticism, Lyricism, and History (NewYork, 1999), pp. 1-32; also p. 75. Mill, 'What is Poetry?', p. 1212. Zimrnennan, Romanticism, Lyricism, and History, pp. 1-37. Mill, 'Two Kinds of Poetry', in The Broadview Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetic Theory, p. 1225. Mill, 'Two Kinds of Poetry', p. 1223. Mill, 'Two Kinds of Poetry', p. 1237. From the Romantic period onward, critics frequently portray female authors either as market-driven hacks or, paradoxically; as naive consWll­ ers of a man-made fantasy. Along with Newlyn, Clery, Ferris and Hofkosh, see Lyn Pykett, The 'Improper' Feminine: The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing (London, 1992), Ann Cvetkovich, Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian SensatiolUllism (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992); Janice Radway; Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill, 1984); Pamela Regis, A Natural History of the Romance Novel (philadelphia, 2003). See, in particular, Woodmansee, The Author, Art, and the Market, pp. 35-56; Clark, The Theory of Inspiration, p. 282; Bawarshi, Genre and the Invention of the Writer, pp. 49-77. Known in North America as New Rhetorical Genre Studies; in the UK, a close parallel would be the anthropological approaches to literacy advanced by Brian Street and colleagues. Dylan B. Dryer, 'Taking Up Space: On Genre Systems as Geographies of the Possible',JAC: Rhetoric, Writing, Culture, Politics, 28/3-4 (2008), 506.

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Bibliography Roberts, Hugh, 'Noises on the Communicative Strategies of Shelley's Prefaces', in Alan M. Weinberg andTimothy Webb (eds), The Unfamiliar Shelley (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp.183-98. Rose, Mark, Authors and Owners: The Invention ofthe Copyright (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993). Rust, Marion, 'Introduction', in Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple, ed. Marion Rust (New York: Norton, 2011), pp. xi-xxx. Salih, Sara, Representing Mixed Race inJamaica and Englandfrom theAbolition Era to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2011). Schellenberg, Betty A., The ProJessionalization of Women Writers in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Schotland, Sarah, 'The Slave's Revenge: The Terror in Charlotte Dacre's Zofioya', in Julie Chapelle, Karnille Stone Stanton and Kirsten Saxton (eds) , Spectacle, Sex, and Property in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture (NewYork:AMS Press, 2015), pp. 159-76. Shapira,Yael, 'Beyond the Radcliffe Formula: Isabella Kelly and the Gothic Troubles of the Married Heroine' , Women's Writing, (published online 26 November 2015), https://www.tandfonline.wm/doilfull/1O.1 080/0 9699082.2015. 1 1 1 0289. Retrieved 30 June 2017. Inventing the Gothic Corpose: The Thrill of Human Remains in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Sharpe, J. A., Crime in Early Modern England: 1 550-1 750 (London: Longman, 1999). Shelton, Don, 'Sir Anthony Carlisle and Mrs Carver' , Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1 780-1840, 19 (2009), 54-96, http://www. romtext.org. uklreportslrt19_n04 I. Siskin, Clifford, 'Eighteenth-Century Periodicals and the Romantic Rise of the Novel', Studies in the Novel, 26/1 of 2, The Romantic Novel (1994), 26-42. The Historicity of Romantic Discourse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). - The Work ofWriting: Literature and Social Change in Britain, 1 700-1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Sodeman, Melissa, Sentimental Memorials: Women and the Novel in Literary History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015). Solomonescu, Yasmin, "'A Plausible Tale": William Godwin's Things As They Are', European Romantic Review, 25/5 (2014), 591-610. 274

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Bibliography Waters, Mary; British Women Writers and the Profession of Literary Criticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) . Watkins, Louise, ' ''Author Sketch" of Selina Davenport', Corinne, Corvey Women Writers on the Web, 1 796- 1 834, Emma Clery and Mary Peace (eels), http://extra.shu.ac.uk/corvey/aadavenportlaadavenbio. htm. Retrieved 31 October 2010. Watson, Nicola, Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1 790-1825: Intercepted Letters, Intercepted Seductions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Weinberg, Alan, and Timothy,Webb (eds), The Unfamiliar Shelley (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). Williams, Ann, Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). Winckles, Andrew; and Angela, Rehbein, 'Introduction: "A Tribe of Authoresses"', in Andrew Winckles and Angela Rehbein (eels), Women's Literary Networks and Romanticism: 'A Tribe ofAuthoresses ' (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), pp. 1-15. Wood, Lisa, 'The Evangelical Novel', in J. A. Downie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 521-35. - Modes of Discipline: Women, Conservatism, and the Novel after the French Revolution (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2003). Woodmansee, Martha, The Author,Art, and the Market: Rereading the History ofAesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Woomer, Rebecca, 'The Republic of Letters: Epistolarity; the Public Sphere, and the Rise of the Novel' (llllPublished Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2010). Wright, Angela and Dale Townshend, 'Gothic and Romantic: An Historical Overview', in Angela Wright and Dale Townshend (eds) , Romantic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), pp. 1-34. Young, Beth Rapp, 'But Are They Any Good? Women Readers, Fonnula Fiction, and the Sacralization of the Literary Canon' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Southern California, 1996). Zimmerman, Sarah, Romanticism, Lyricism, and History (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999). 276

Index

Adeline; or the Orphan 1 1 1 , 1 1 2-15 Anna Melvil 1 1 7-18 ref. to Millenium Hall 1 1 8 Austen, Jane Northanger Abbey Austen's list of 'horrid novels' as influence on Minerva scholarship today 3 defence of novels in 28, 30, 34,56 see also The Follies if St. James Street; Rosina; Cambrian Pictures; Romame Readers and Writer.> Sense and Sensibility 54, 97 Persuasion, in ref. to nz Effects if a Rash Vow 62-3 Pride and Prejudice 71 Bage, Robert Hermsprong 162-3 (includes refS to work by Hannah Hudson and Marilyn Buder) Bannet, Eve Tavor eighteenth-century women's exemplary heroines 87 Minerva gothics as exported by American authors, most notably Charles Brockden Brown 232 Batchelor, Jennie Minerva authors' letters to the Royal Literary Fund xxix n.25, 232-3 n.14 women's representation of work in eighteenth-century novels (in point of contrast to Minerva novels) 237 n.64 see also Mat Has Been and The Hypocrite

Index Lady's Magazine and Minerva as overlapping networks of authors and texts 231-2 n.5 Bawarshi,Anis on genre as a site that reveals 'social motives' 55, 80 Beauclerc, Amelia Husband Hunters!!! 201-3 Ora andJuliet 238 n.75 Behrendt, Stephen on an expansive Romantic writing community that includes female poets 237 see also Shelley, gothic novels Blenheim Lodge 1 1 1-12, 1 23 Bennett, Agnes Maria The Beggar Girl and Her Ben1actors 149 Binhammer, Katherine on Hays's Emma Courtney as an avid novel reader 242 nn. 17-18 Blakemore, Stephen batde among revolutionary writers on how to represent post-Terror France 124 Bonhote, Elizabeth Olivia; or, Deserted Bride 64-5 Brody,Jennifer DeVere see The Woman if Colour Burke, Edmund Riflections on the Revolution if France xxv, 104, 107-9, 150 as theorist of the habitual 1 1 0 'eloquence' of 105--6, 1 1 0, 1 26 Burney, Fanny The VU!:nderer 244 n.l, 246 n.18 Buder, Marilyn see Hermsprong 'war of ideas' xxix n.24 A Butler's Diary; Or, the History if Miss Eggerton 125-6 see also Burke's Reflections on the Revolution if Frame Chandler, James on Wordsworth's cultivation of a 'second' nature 134 Clarissa see Minerva novels, sentimental conventions Clemit, Pamela see Things As They Are Clery, Emma on Radcliffe's poetic heroines 93 see also as point of contrast to Victoria of Dacre's Zofloya 254 n.35 on circulating library novels as well-worn objects 244 The Child if Providence 1 1 1 , 1 1 6-17 Copeland, Edward Minerva novels and lower-middle class heroines xxix n.25 Minerva novels as distinct from 'didactic' and 'genteel' ones 5, 232-3 n.14

278

Index Craciun,Adriana see Zofioya Dacre, Charlotte Zifloya 181-4 and the 'masculine' gothic's shock value 182 scholarship on Zofioya as reflecting period representations of gender 183, 253 n.17 racist discourse 254 n.18 Davenport, Selena The Hypocrite; or, the ModemJanus 209-12 possible biographical references 256-7 n.13 Davidson, Cathy the heroine's seduction and death in early American sentimental novels, as exemplified by Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple 159 Discernment and canonical Romantic poetics 29-30, 54, 56, 60, 213 see also Deirdre Lynch; Romantic lyricism as adopted by Eliza Fenwick and Mary Hays 76-85 evidence in 'masculine' gothics like The Monk and Zofioya 179 Minerva novelists' adaptation for a collective authorial model see The Follies of St.James Street; Rosina;Josephine Mary Wollstonecraft's feminist variation on xxiv, 49-52, 54, 76, 87-9 1 , 94 Minerva novelists' 'undiscerning' but still feminist brand of authorship xxv, 55, 67, 91-7 see also Burton- Jil.Vod; Delia Dominique, Lyndon see The Jil.Vman of Colour Edward and Sophia 65-6 Ellen Rus liford 123-5 contemporary review of xxx Ellis, Kate on Antonia's erotic feelings for Ambrosio in The Monk 180 The English Novel, 1 770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles see Minerva novels, publishing records for Fenwick, Eliza Secresy, or, the Ruin on the Rock 76-80, 118-19, 197 choice of Lane as publisher 76 Ferguson, Moira on eighteenth-century British women "Writers' analogies between their own subjected state and that ofAfrican slaves 218 Ferris, Ina the novelist as 'stamp' xix Finch, Peter see Shelley, gothic novels Fisher's Exact Test see Minerva novels, publication records

279

Index The Follies if St.James Street 29, 30-5 contemporary review of 32 as referenced in scholarship by Blakey, McLeod, Raven, and Neiman 32 Frosch, Thomas see Shelley, Alastor Garner, Michael on writers' collaborations with publishers xvn on Wordsworth's offensive (and not simply defensive) stance in 1800-2 XVlll, 174 on the emergence of high and low literature, and the gothic's discursive entanglement vvith what comes to be called Romanticism 174, 196, 227, 252 critics' portrayal of The Monk 179 Garside, Peter on attribution in anonymous novels, including The Jil.Vman if Colour 6 on Newman's buying of remaindered stock in the 1810s and 1820s 17-18 on the literary market (novels and reviews) in the 1810s 14 see also The English Novel reo my use of publishing records from Giltrow, Janet metagenre 175, 208 Gitehnan, Lisa 'raw data' as an oxytIloron 3 Godwin, William An Enquiry Cotueming PoliticalJustice 1793 edition 106, 108-10 and necessity 133, 143 and the discerning author xxv, 128, 143-4 1796 edition and emphasis on feeling as an episteme 109, 150 , 21 7 'Of History and Romance' 130-1, 146, 248 n.l0 Things As They Are; or the Adventures if Caleb Williams 128-46 as in relation to Political Justice 129-30, 133 Godvvin's two conclusions to 131-2, 140-4 (includes refS to work by Gary Kelly, Gary Handwerk, andYasmin Solomnescu) 1794 edition 128, 132, 1 36-43 1796 edition 128 1797 edition 128, 144-5 St. Leon 189 Green, Sarah Romance Readers and Romance Writer.> 43-4 Scotch Novel Reading 44 Grenby, Matthew Minerva and the anti-Jacobin novel 150-1 Grundy, Isobel see Seaesy (and Fenwick's decision to publish vvith Lane)

280

Index Handwerk, Gary on Godwin's five editions to Things As They Are 128 see also Things As They Are Harvey, Jane Aubeny Stanhope: or, Memoirs of an Author 203-9 Warkfield Casde 199 Hatton, Anne Julia Cambrian Pictures: or, Every One has Errors 42-4 Sialian Mysteries, or the Fortress of Del Vechii 255 n.46 Hays, Emrna Memoirs of Emma Courtney 81-5 see also Binharnrner; discernment; Norton Victim of Pr;;fudice 243 n.31 The Heir of Montague 148, 150, 163-70 Hess, Scott on the poet's reinvention of poetic sensibility over the long-eighteenth century 35 Hofkash, Sonia for phrase 'circulating-library sensibility' 135 Hoeveler, Diane see Zofloya gothic feminism 253 n.7 Hudson, Hannah xxix n.25 see also Bage The nz Effects of a Rash Vow 62-3 Lane's advertisement of 63 Wollstonecraft's review of 64 Jacobs, Edward on the popularity of the signature 'by a lady' 1 1 on circulating-library novels as gendered 'feminine' and 'reproductive' 49 for how such novels teach readers to be playful and interactive authors 233 Jacson, Frances Disobedience 148, 158--62 (includes refS. to work by Anthony Mandal and Joan Percy) novels as long-attributed to Minerva's Alethea Levvis, and Joan Percy's correction to the record 250 n.1 Julie, ou la Nouvelle H;loise see Minerva novels, sentimental conventions Kelly, Gary gendered subjectivities and the eighteenth-century 'cultural revolution' 120, 167 Revolutionary feminism, definition of 239 Wollstonecraft's return to the novel in Wrongs 242 the Jacobin novel, definition of 142 see also Godvvin, Things As They Are

281

Index Klancher, Jon see Godwin, 'Of History and Romance' Laqueur, Thomas on the eighteenth-century shift from a 'one-sex' to 'two-sex' model 71 Lewis, Matthew Th, Monk 1 79-81 The Liberal American 60-2 Lynch, Deirdre market pressures, Minerva, and 'discernment' as influence on the Romantic­ era novel 29-30, 32, 54 MacDonald, Simon see Meeke Mackenzie, Anna Maria Burton-Wood 67-9 McLeod, Deborah see Minerva Press, advertising and publishing practices Mandal, Anthony xxix n.25 on updates and corrections to publishing records in The English Novel XXll

see also Jacson Mariamne: or, Irish Anecdotes 246 Market see Romantic exchange Matilda, or the Efforts if Virtue 58---60 Mazzeo, Tiljar on 'plagiarism' as redefmed by Romantic writers 184 Meeke, Elizabeth Count St. Blatuhard, or, the PrlFfudiced Judge 148, 150-8 on Simon MacDonald's correction to the record as to Meeke's full name and identity 250, n. 1 Mellor, Ann f on Wollstonecra:fi:'s The Wrongs i Jll.Vman 89 on Romantic appropriations of a female literary tradition 163, 200 Mill, John Stuart '"What is Poetry?' 106, 170,213, 225---6 'Two Kinds of Poetry' 226-7 Millenium Hall see Anna Melvil Minerva novels 'borrowed material', reading Minerva novels for xxi-xxii, 26-7 bibliographic approach to publication records from The English Novel organizing factors of dataset xxii, 3-1 1 , 232 n.l l , 233 n.17 statistical analysis of, via Fisher's ExactText 7, 233 n.19 defIning the Minerva author, inclusive and exclusive defmitions of 5-7, 10, 174 mapping a census period 3-7

282

Index biographical approach to xxiii, xxix, 232-3 n.14, 250 n.l gothic conventions Minerva's reputation for, then and now, and my tide phrase xxiv, 174-5, 198, 200-1 see also Potter in relation to the 'masculine' gothic mode 179, 198 as compared to Radcliffe's gothics xxiv, xxix-xxx n.25, xxxi n.31 see also Mat Has Been and Rosina exportation of by American authors see Bannet and providential conventions and the French Revolution debate in relation to Burke's Reflections xxv, 101-2, 123 and to Godwin's Political Justice xxv 150 fatalistic language of 104-5 the commoner-to-nobleman formula 93, 102, 1 05-6, 148-50 also the commoner-to-noblewoman 102, 1 04-6, 1 26 and sentimental conventions in 1780s novels xxiv, 53-6 for Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise and Clarissa as source texts 55 for The Sorrows c:fYoung Werther 238 n.75 feminist subtext of 51-2, 55, 67, 71 , 76 and Minerva's early providential novels (1790-4) xxv 1 01-2, 110, 1 1 5-18, 120, 1 26 in Regency novels, as inflected by the Romantic refashioning of sensibility into a poetics 200, 223 discernment, language and conventions of 'lady' authorship, patronizing treatment of see Burton Wood; Anna Melvil; Josephine the quixotic female reader for shift from 'sponge' to 'stamp' xvi, 27-8, 32-5 &ee also Mat Has Been; Husband Hunters!!!; The Heir if Montague; Romance Readers and Writers; Scotch Novel Reading; Aubeny Stanhope; The Woman if Colour poetic genius as alternative ethos to 'lady' authorship 35 see also Mat Has Been; Rosina; Husband Hunters!!!; Auberry Stanhope; for the poet as variation on the commoner-to-nobleman formula see The Hypocrite as a network distinctive features of xxii-xxiv, xxviii, 26, 54-5, 1 1 7 for meta-discursive commentary on network by novelists at various stages in its formation xxiii-xxiv, 45-6, 49, 83, 174, 1 01-2, 1 1 2-13, 1 1 7-18, 126-7, 200 ,

,

283

Index shared features with other marginalized Romantic-era authorial communities xxvi, 237 n.2 see also Batchelor, for Minerva's network as intersecting with that of the Lady's Magazine as support for patterns in publishing records 8 , 26 , 45 wider implications of for Romantic-era studies 1 1 7, 127, 150 , 1 75, 170, 225 critical reception in the 1790s 26 in the Regency period 42 on the 'branding'ofMinerva xxx , 1 , 17, 225, 231 n.2 translations of 232 n. l l , 233 n.17, 256 n.7 The Minerva Press, advertising and publishing practices as suggested by my review of material novels for paper and quality XXll, xxx, 1 7-21, 234-5 see also Minerva novels, publishing records for discussion of suggestive patterns in data as they correlate with publishing practices at different points in !v1inerva's run (also refS. for Blakey; McLeod; Raven; Garside) Moreno, Beatriz GonzJez see Zofloya Moretti, Franco distant reading, as method for remapping literary history 1-2 Morin, Christina Minerva novels by Irish authors xxix n.25 Newlyn, Lucy see Romantic 'anxiety' Norton, Brian Michael on Emma's split subjectivity in The Memoirs if Emma Courtney 84-5, 242-3 n.19 Paine, Thomas A Vindication if the Rights of Man 123 Percy, Joan as classing Jacson's spirited heroines just below Burney's 162 for evidence that Jacson's four novels were hers and not Alethea Lewis's 250 n.l Pmiana, the Nymph of the Sea 246 Philp, MMk on Godwin's Political Justice as influenced by Burke's Reflections 1 1 0 on government as servitude 250 Pilkington, Miss Delia 69-71 Rosina 91, 174 Poovey, Mary on The Wrongs of VJ.Vman 5 1 , 86

284

Index Potter, Franz on recycled conventions in 'trade' Gothics in the 1810s as proof of their continued popularity, and in contrast to critical discourse about 252 n. 1 Radcliffe,Ann see Minerva novels, gothic conventions Rajan, Tillotama on Godwin's 'prophetic' reader, as applied to Things As They Are 131, 141 see also Shelley's gothic novels Raven, James on measurements for the Romantic-era novel's success 21 on attribution chains in anonymous novels 41 on paper quality in Romantic-era novels 234-5 n.32 for ref. to distinctions among publishers, including Lane 235 n.13 see also The English Novel, publishing records from; The Follies if St.James Street Reader,WJ. on the apothecary and a three-tiered medical profession 151 Reeve, Clara The Old English Baron 244 n.2 Romantic 'anxiety' Lucy Newlyn's coining of phrase XVl-ll as the informing concept that shapes most recent scholarship on .N1inerva novels xv-xvii when reassessed as just one of several sites of Romantic exchange, potential impact on scholarship, from Minerva novels xv to Romantic-era studies xx, 170, 229 to literary studies more broadly 228 Romantic exchange as my tide phrase xvi-xvii and the market's influence on Romantic redefInitions of authorship and literature xxvi-xxvii see also Romantic 'anxiety'; discernment; Gamer; Lynch; Siskin; St. Clair representations of authorship as reflective of a shared social text commonalities but also differences among fIrst generation Romantics of this study xvi-xx, 50-1, 1 73-4, 239, n. 6 Wollstonecraft's attention to 'feminine' emotions that still beleaguer feminist revolutionary authors, herself included xix, xxiv-xxv, 75--6, 90-1 Godwin's effort to meet his intended readers where they are xix, xxv, 103, 1 31-2 Wordsworth's cultivation of'poetic' habits of mind xix, 41, 51, 75, 133-- collective authorial model, evidence of in Minerva novels XVl as suggested by analysis of publishing records 2

285

Index as exemplified by meta-discursive novels that take up conventions and language of'prolific' print culture xvi, xx-xxi, xxv-xxvi, 2, 25-7, 199-200, 223-4 see also The Follies if St. James Street, Rosina; Mat Has Been; Cambrian Pictures; Husband Hunters!!!; The Hypoaite; Aubeny Stanhope; Romame Readers and Writer.>; Burton-Wood; Delia; Anna Melvil; A Buder's Diary Shelley's mature poetics as inflected both by his Romantic mentors and by Minerva's authorial model xx, xxvi, 178, 192--4, 196-8, 228-9 Romantic lyricism Sarah Zimmerman's discussion of, both as represented by twentieth-century Romanticists and by today's more expansive definition 213, 226, 256 n.6 Romanticism see discernment; Romantic 'anxiety'; Romantic exchange; Romantic lyricism Roche, Maria Regina see Minerva's gothics (in relation to Radcliffe's) Rowson, Susanna Charlotte, a Tale ifTmth 159, 251 n.16 The Fille de Chambre 120-2, 246-7 n.24 St Clair, William the market as influence on the rhetoric of romanticism XVll Salih, Sarah see The Woman if Colour sensibility see discernment The Sentimental Deceiver, or, History if Miss Hammond 56-8 Shelley, Percy Alastor 200-1 , 223 (includes refS. to Thomas Frosch andWilliam Uhner) A Defence of Poetry 175--D, 177, 196-7, 198 poetics, as compared to Wordsworth's Preface 178, 196, 223--4 as influence on Mill's idealized poet 226-7 Shelley's gothics, scholarship on see Behrendt; Rajan; Finch Zastrozzi 1 75-6, 184-8 =d Zofioya 184, 1 85 and Wordsworth's Preface 188, 197-8 St, Iwyn' 175--D, 178, 188-96 and GodVi'in's St. Leon 189, 191-2 also Things As They Are 1 9 1 , 193 and Wollstonecraft's Wrongs 189, 194-5 and FenVi'ick's Secresy 197 and Wordsworth's Preface 1 93-4 and Lane's 'by a lady' novels 194 =d Zofioya 195 Shelton, Don for speculation on identity of Minerva's 'J...1rs Carver' 5 Shapira,Yael xxix n.25 see also Minerva novels, gothic conventions

286

Index Shared social text see Romantic Exchange Siskin, Clifford the 'Romantic myth' that some authors 'transcend' culture xxvii, 27 see also Godwin, 'Of History and Romance' Sleath, Eleanor see Minerva's gothics (in relation to Radcliffe's) A Soldier's q{fspring see Beauderc, Ora and Juliet Solomnescu, Yasmin see Godwin, Things As They Are Sorrows ifYoung JIl.irther see Minerva novels, sentimental conventions Taylor, Miss Josephine 94-5 Rosalind 95-7 Todd, Janet on sentimental fiction 56 Uhner, William see Shelley, Alastor Walpole, Horace The Castle of Otranto 105 Wallace, Miriam on anachronistic usage of term 'feminist' 240 n.4 and the Jacobin novel xxix n.24 Watson, Nicola on revolutionary and counterrevolutionary women writers' adaptation of the sentimental 'I' 56, 126 as applied to Meeke's and Jac:son's Minerva novels 163 Wollstonecraft's Wrongs 86-7 Fenwick's Seaesy 79-80 Mat Has Been 35-42, 174 contemporary review of 41-2 Williams, Raymond structure of feeling, in ref. to Shelley's Difence 196-7 as used in ref. to Minerva novels' authorial model 43, 102, 127, 164, 223 Wollstonecraft, Mary reviews in Analytical Review xxiv, 49 A Vindication of the Rights of Men 105, 123 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 49-50, 55, 64, 90, 115, 120 'true voluptuousness' as reserved for revolutionary subjects 74,90, 221 'herculean' habits of mind, in contrast to feminine ones xix, 50 Mary; A Fiction 54 The Wrongs ofrfOman 86-91 author's preface to 86-7 phrase 'highly-finished Minervas' xix, 5 1 , 73-4, 87 The rfOman if Colour 6, 201, 212-23, 257 llll. 18-19 (includes refS. to work by Lyndon Dominique, Sara Salih, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Emily Rebecca Woomer)

287

Index Wood, Lisa on the Evangelical novel 214 Wordsworth, William Essay, Supplementary to the Preface to Poems (1815), in ref. to Aubeny Stanhope 207 Preface to Lyrical Ballads and Wordsworth's poetic habits of mind xix, 1 3 1 , 134-6, 170, 223 in ref. to Mat Has Been 36 in ref. to The Heir of Montague 148, 150, 163 1800 edition 133-4 1802 revision xix, 1 34-5 Yamboo: or, The North American Slave, as point of contrast to The Jil.Vman of Colour 258 Zimmerman, Sarah see Romantic lyricism

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