Chapter 4 - Hannah More’s Cœlebs and the Novel of the Moment

Summary

This chapter uses the 1808 publication of Hannah More’s unlikely best-seller, the novel Coelebs in Search of a Wife to explore the ways that Romantic authors responded to heightened competition by writing novels that they identify as explicitly ephemeral – works intended to be read and relevant in their contemporary moment rather than valued in posterity. Within two years of Coelebs’ publication, other authors had produced at least six full-length response novels, which imitated, continued, parodied, or mocked the original work. The authors of these works embrace the idea of literary production as time-sensitive and transient: rather than fearing or fighting the phenomenon, they capitalize on the fast-paced literary culture of the time to emphasize their own works’ timeliness and contemporary relevance. If there are too many books, one must read and write faster; by the same token, however, the less time on the public stage each individual book demands, the more the field is opened for even greater numbers of novels.