8 - Anglo-French Relations and the Novel in the Eighteenth Century

Summary

The business of novels in the long eighteenth century was an international affair. This chapter argues that literary histories giving accounts of the ‘rise’ of the novel should look again at influential nineteenth and twentieth century national histories, and challenge them: the European novel can be seen to develop as a cross-channel product in the period. Taking a book-historical perspective, and giving evidence of reception of French Fiction in Britain via that most English of authors, Jane Austen herself, I document the presence of the French novel on British bookshelves. Via readings of the ways in which fiction crossed the channel, it becomes apparent that British anxieties about French fiction have their roots in the eighteenth century and – I argue – with the establishment of formal reviewing and periodical culture. Anglo-French exchanges in the novel in the long eighteenth century look very different if we look beyond the canonical texts and authors of the period. Now neglected eighteenth-century women writers – often translated, and themselves translators – adopted a feminised cosmopolitanism in their novels. I conclude that taking a cross-channel approach is the most appropriate way to write our histories of the novel in the eighteenth century.