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The Conservative Attitude toward Fiction, 1770–1830

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

W. F. Gallaway Jr.
W. F. Gallaway Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
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Extract

In 1843 when Lord Jeffrey reviewed the critical activity of his early maturity he took pains to explain his unsympathetic treatment of fiction in the columns of The Edinburgh Review:

It may be worth while to inform the present generation that, in my youth, writings of this sort were rated very low with us—scarcely allowed indeed to pass as part of a nation's permanent literature—and generally deemed altogether unworthy of any grave critical notice.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1940 , pp. 1041 - 1059
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1940

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References

1 Lord Jeffrey, Contributions to the Edinburgh Review (New York, 1869), pp. 512, 517, 528; Lord Cockbum, Life of Lord Jeffrey with a Selection from his Correspondence (Edinburgh, 1852), ii, 381, 442.

2 Joseph B. Heidler, The History, from 1770 to 1800 of English Criticism of Prose Fiction (Urbana, 1928). See especially pages 19–25, 31, 36, 39, 46, 73, 77, 110.

3 F. T. Blanchard, Fielding the Novelist. A Study in Historical Criticism (New Haven, 1927).

4 Vicessimus Knox, Essays Moral and Literary (London, 1822), i, 92–97, 332, 413, ii, 7–8, 445.

5 James Beattie, Dissertations Moral and Critical (Dublin, 1783), i, 237, ii, 320.

6 Hannah More, Works (London, 1834), i, 42, 48–51, 134; iii, 28, 33, 126, 122–123, 188; iv, 284; vi, 299 ff.; Roberts, Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Hannah More (London, 1839), i, 581–582.

7 Hugh Murray, The Morality of Fiction, Edinburgh, 1805, pp. 1–46, 135–141; A. B. Shepperson, The Novel in Motley (Cambridge, Mass. 1936), pp. 88–89.

8 Shepperson, op. cit.; W. H. Rogers, “The Reaction Against Melodramatic Sentimentality in the English Novel,” PMLA, xlix, 98–123.

9 Jane Austen, Love and Freindship and Other Early Works (London, 1929), passim; Northanger Abbey. Chapter 25.

10 William Beckford, Azemia (London, 1797), passim; Shepperson, op. cit., pp. 103–106; Rogers, op. cit., pp. 99–104.

11 William McKee, Elizabeth Inchbald, Novelist (Washington, D. C., 1935), pp. 153–163.

12 E. S. Barrett, The Heroine (London, 1927), pp. 30, 37–40, 44–45, 51, 61, 66, 71, 74, 114, 139–140, 165, 182, 277, 314, 318, 349–362; Shepperson, op. cit., pp. 166–175; Rogers, op. cit., pp. 107–108.

13 R. J. Mackintosh, Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh (Boston, 1853), ii, 132.

14 Joseph Heidler, op. cit., p. 130; Fanny Burney, Preface to The Wanderer (New York, 1814), p. x; Fanny Burney, Diary and Letters (London. 1854), i, 339, ii, 108, 121, 123; iii, 354, iv, 123; vi, 41; Austin Dobson, Fanny Burney (London, 1903), pp. 26 ff.

15 F. T. Blanchard, op. cit., pp. 210, 224, 234; William Hayley. Poems and Plays (London, 1788), i, 151–154; iii, 115; Anna Seward, Letters (Edinburgh, 1811), i, 127–128, 293; ii, 341, 372; William Combe, Dr. Syntax, Eis Three Tours (London, 188–), p. 262; Mrs. Barbauld, “On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing,” in British Novelists (London, 1810), i, 52–58; R. J. Mackintosh, op. cit., ii, 134 ff, 481.

16 Lord Jeffrey, op. cit., p. 646; Blanchard, op. cit., p. 266; Lady Llandover, The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany (London, 1861), iii, 223, 580, 593; Eliz. Montagu, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare (London, 1810), pp. 287, 294; Knapp ed., Intimate Letters of Mrs. Piazzi & Penelope Pennington (London, 1914), pp. 228–229; Maria Edgeworth, Advertisement to Belinda; Cowper, Progress of Error, lines 307–322; Heidler, op. cit., p. 144.

17 Goldsmith, Citizen of the World, Letter lxxxiii; J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England, 1770–1800 (London, 1932), p. 4; Blanchard, op. cit., pp. 262–263; L. M. Hawkins, Memoirs, Anecdotes, Facts, and Opinions (London, 1824), i, 195–196, 200, 203; Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature (Boston, 1833), i, 150; George Canning, The Microcosm, May 14, 1787; Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance (Colchester, 1785), ii, 78; Heidler, op. cit., p. 153; Walter Scott, Lives of the Novelists (London: Everyman, n.d.), p. 318; Lounger, No. 20.

18 Johnson, Rambler, March 31, 1750; Canning, loc. cit., Alice Gauseen, A Later Pepys (London, 1904), i, 385; Graham, English Literary Periodicals (New York, 1930), p. 141; Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, Chapter vi.

19 Goldsmith, op. cit., Letter lxxxiii; Crabbe, Poetical Works (London, 1834), ii, 60–61; Knapp, op. cit., pp. 228–229; Mrs. Barbauld, op. cit., pp. 49, 52–58; William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men (New York, 1831), sections 311–312; Payne Knight, An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste) London, 1808), p. 457.

20 The attitude toward imagination has been studied by Donald F. Bond in “Distrust of the Imagination in English Neo-classicism,” PQ, xix, 54–69, and in “The Neo-classical Psychology of the Imagination, ELB, iv, 245–264. The belief that the artist should maintain contact with reality was widespread. Some of the more prominent critical utterances are the following: Shaftesbury, Characteristics (London, 1723), i, 4; Steele, Tatler, No. 172; Addison, Spectator, No. 523; Guardian, No. 30; Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1896), pp. 121–122; Fielding, Amelia, Book i, Chapter i; Richardson, Correspondence, ed. Mrs. Barbauld (London, 1804), iv, 220; Joseph Wharton, Essay on Pope (London, 1806), i, 249–250; Goldsmith, Works, ed. J. W. M. Gibbs (London, 1885), iv, 290; Johnson, Idler, No. 50; Adventurer, No. 92, and Lives of the Poets, ed. Waugh (New York, n.d.), iv, 122; The Mirror, No. 63; Mrs. Montagu, op. cit., pp. 35–36; Lord Karnes, Elements of Criticism (Boston, 1796), i, 77–86. Arguments in behalf of the ”rule“ of probability meet one on every hand.

21 J. M. S. Tompkins, op. cit., p. 207, note 2.

22 Sheridan, The Rivals; Goldsmith, Citizen of the World, Letter xxviii; Barrett, The Eeroine; Crabbe, op. cit., viii, 257 ff; Edgeworth, Moral Tales (London: Routledge, n.d.), p. 100; Anna Seward, op. cit., i, 83–84, 87. Shepperson, op. cit., p. 195 records another instance of a fiction-struck heroine in Scotch Novel Reading (1824), a volume I have been unable to secure.

23 Goldsmith, Works, i, 449; Gauseen, op. cit., i, 378; Clara Reeve, op. cit., ii, 78; Mathias Works (Dublin, 1799), pp. 58–60; Foster, Essays in a Series of Letters (London, 1833), p. 205; R. J. Mackintosh, op. cit., ii, 132; Mrs. Barbauld, op. cit., pp. 52–58. Conspicuous early arguments against fiction as an undesirable falsification of life may be found in Steele's The Tender Husband, Act iv, scene 11; in Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Green and Grose (London, 1907), ii, 388; in The World, Nos. 19, 25, 79; in Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Letters and Works, ed. Thomas (London, 1886), ii, 289; and in Joseph Spence as cited by Heidler, op. cit., p. 69.

24 Mrs. Inchbald, loc. cit.; Mrs. Barbauld, op. cit., pp. 52–58; Clara Reeve, Preface to The School for Widows; Payne Knight, op. cit., pp. 452–453.

25 Knapp, op. cit., pp. 228–229; Payne Knight, loc. cit.; Walter Scott, op. cit., p. 65.

26 Payne Knight, The Progress of Civil Society (London, 1796), p. 67; Crabbe, The Borough, in Works, iv, 6–10; Mrs. Inchbald, loc. cit.; Tompkins, op. cit., p. 5; Shepperson, op. cit., p. 127.

27 Peter Pindar [John Wolcot], Works (London, 1812), ii, 355; Gaussen, op. cit., ii, 388; Crabbe, loc. cit.

28 Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, Chapter vi.

29 Richard Graves, Spiritual Quixote (London, 1810), I, 8, 116, 240 ff; Heidler, op. cit., pp. 99, 141, 167; Blanchard, op. cit., p. 228; Godwin, The Enquirer (London, 1797), 140–144; D'Israeli, op. cit., ii, 217–218.

30 Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (Dublin, 1783), iii, 100–102.

31 John Moore, “A View of the Commencement and Progress of Romance,” in The Works of Smollett (London, 1872), pp. 70–72.

32 J. and A. L. Aikin, Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose (London, 1773), pp. 42–43, 212–214; Mrs. Barbauld, op. cit., i, 1–3, 46, 58.

33 R. J. Mackintosh, op. cit., ii, 20, 127 ff, 134 ff.

34 Madame D'Arblay, The Wanderer (New York, 1814), pp. vi–x.

35 John Dunlop, The History of Fiction (Edinburgh, 1816), i, xxvii–xxx, iii, 426 ff, 463 ff.

36 Walter Scott, op. cit., p. 65.