McKeon's dissections are often breathtaking... [his] anthology is solid, commandingly centered,... superbly energetic and uniquely powerful.
Marshall Brown Eighteenth-Century Fiction As comprehensive an account of the genre as you could wish. What a marvelous collection and what a skillful editor McKeon is, marshalling the essays into an argument for the novel as a distinct 'literary historical genre' rather than ... Read moreas one element in a bland, all-embracing narrative theory... The outstanding feature of this fine collection is its firm commitment to the art of the novelist. Throughout, there is a profound recognition of the novel's ability to criticise the existing order, to create new and compelling worlds, to extend our grammar and enlarge our vocabulary for coping with the great dramas of life, love, death and the shoelace snapping when you are late for work.
Gary Day Times Higher Education Supplement The anthology provides not only a splendid guide to thinking about the novel, but also a useful warning against assuming that fiction is merely the instrument of those who wish to dampen revolution, forge national identities, and build empires.
Jonathan Lamb Studies in English Literature This breathtaking comprehensive collection of essays... is an amazingly ambitious project... McKeon has provided us with an invaluable map of the theoretical and literary-historical landscape surrounding the origins, theories, and developments of the novel.
Ansgar Nunning Giesen LWU This is a richly stimulating volume, an invaluable resource and challenging intervention for all serious researchers into the novel. This Year's Work in English Studies As a teaching text this anthology can hardly be bettered.
David Walker British Journal for 18th-Century Studies Show Less