The Secret Life of Things

Animals, Objects, and It-Narratives in Eighteenth-Century England
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.
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.

Contributor: Mark Blackwell (Edited by), Nicholas Hudson (Contributions by), Barbara M. Benedict (Contributions by), Markman Ellis (Contributions by), Lynn Festa (Contributions by), Ann Louise Kibbie (Contributions by), Christopher Flint (Contributions by), Deidre Lynch (Contributions by), Hillary Jane Englert (Contributions by), Bonnie Blackwell (Contributions by), Mark Blackwell (Contributions by), John Plotz (Contributions by), Aileen Douglas (Contributions by), Jonathan Lamb (Contributions by), Liz Bellamy (Contributions by)

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