ABOUT THIS BOOK

Enriching and complicating the history of fiction between Richardson and Fielding at mid-century and Austen at the turn of the century, this collection focuses on it-narratives, a once popular form largely forgotten by readers and critics alike, and advances important work on consumer culture and the theory of things. The contributors bring new texts—and new ways of thinking about familiar ones—to our notice. Topics range from period debates about copyright to the complex relationships with object-riddled sentimental fictions, from anti-Semitism in Chrysal to jingoistic imperialism in The Adventures of a Rupee. Essays situate it-narratives in a variety of contexts: changing attitudes toward occult powers, the development of still-life painting, the ethical challenges of pet ownership, the cult of Sterne and the appearance of genre fiction, the emergence of moral-didactic children’s literature, and a better-known tradition of Victorian thing-narratives. Stylistically and thematically consistent, the essays in this collection approach it-narratives from various theoretical and historical vantage points, sketching the cultural biography of a neglected literary form.

Published by Bucknell University Press.
Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Mark Blackwell is a professor of English at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. He is the editor of British It-Narratives, 1750-1830 and his work has appeared in ECTI, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Life, The Cambridge History of the English Novel, and The Blackwell Companion to the English Novel.

REVIEWS

“Blackwell’s collection brings together some of the best previously published essays on eighteenth-century thinginess, such as Aileen Douglas’s essay on it-narratives and empire (1993), and important new work by Barbara Benedict, Jonathan Lamb, Deidre Lynch, Markman Ellis, Lynn Festa, and Blackwell himself, among others . . . [This] is a valuable collection for eighteenth-century studies and for ‘thing-theory’ more generally.”

— Modern Philology

“I think (this volume) represents essentially the best-case scenario for the edited collection of literary criticism that is organized not for a series or as primarily a teaching tool but as the best way of compiling a field’s state of knowledge on an emerging topic . . . (it) remains an indispensable resource for scholars working on a host of topics related to the it-narrative and the animated objects of eighteenth-century literature.”

— SEL

“The Secret Life of Things fully realizes the ambitions that Mark Blackwell established for the volume—both to leaven the history of prose fiction and to contribute to our understanding of eighteenth-century attitudes towards the new object world —ambitions that square with those of the Bucknell series in which it appears, devoted to eighteenth-century literature and culture.”

— ECF

“Complex and sophisticated. . . . Blackwell’s volume both carefully scrutinizes it-narratives and provides interesting perspectives on them.”

— Style

“Mark Blackwell has assembled a group of lively, provocative, and readable essays. We are lucky to have them. . . . The Secret Life of Things is an erudite and enjoyable guide, well-written and wide-ranging.”

— Review of English Studies

“By bringing our attention to a genre that realizes the apparently impossible condition of material objects behaving as narrative protagonists, Blackwell's collection destabilizes our received impressions of eighteenth-century narrative as an evolving institution of realism . . . [I]ntriguing analyses and claims fill The Secret Life of Things.”

— Eighteenth-Century Life

“Blackwell’s collection marks the arrival of a substantial new body of work. Admirably inclusive . . . The Secret Life of Things will be useful for anyone who is working on objects in eighteenth-century narrative.”

— TLS

“The collection . . . adroitly consolidates, assesses, and extends the best work available in this fruitful intersection of theory and culture. The book boasts some of the most distinguished scholarly critics of the 18th-century operating in the field today, and one finds herein numerous instances of scintillating and luminous critical prose. . . . Recommended.”

— CHOICE

"The Secret Life of Things serves to encapsulate the most important work done recently on eighteenth-century it-narratives, while advancing the field significantly. It is likely to remain the definitive treatment of the eighteenth-century it-narrative for years to come, while also being of permanent interest to students of the history of the novel."

— Adam Potkay, author of Hope: A Literary History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The It-Narrative and Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory
Mark Blackwell
Part I: The Stories Things Tell
The Spirit of Things
Barbara M. Benedict
The Rape of the Lock as Still Life
Jonathan Lamb
Personal Effects and Sentimental Fictions
Deidre Lynch
Suffering Things: Lapdogs, Slaves, and Counter-Sensibility
Markman Ellis
PartII:ApproachingIt-Narratives
It-Narrators and Circulation: Defining a Subgenre
Liz Bellamy
Britannia’s Rule and the It-Narrator
Aileen Douglas
Speaking Objects: The Circulation of Stories in Eighteenth-Century Prose Fiction
Christopher Flint
Hackwork: It-Narratives and Iteration
Mark Blackwell
Occupying Works: Animated Objects and Literary Property
Hilary Jane Englert
Circulating Anti-Semitism: Charles Johnstone’s Chrysal
Ann Louise Kibbie
Corkscrews and Courtesans: Sex and Death in Circulation Novels
Bonnie Blackwell
It-Narratives: Fictional Point of View and Constructing the Middle Class
Nicholas Hudson
Part III: It-Narratives in Transition
The Moral Ends of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Object Narratives
Lynn Festa
Discreet Jewels: Victorian Diamond Narratives and the Problem of Sentimental Value
John Plotz
Contributors
Index