The Oxford History of the Novel in English

Joshua J. McEvilla, University of Toronto, Renaissance and Reformation By tracing the early beginnings of "the novel" within an age of "prose fiction," Keymer and his authors make strides to place what is "the novel" within a larger, malleable framework of writing styles, one that can be adapted to the pressures of new media.

Anna Faktorovich, Pennsylvania Literary Journal This first volume in the set is particularly important for current scholars because earlier theories regarding what constitutes the first "modern novel" have been questioned, and demand additional research ... It is a relief that an Oxford textbook is responding to scholarly concerns ahead of many other literary critics.

Mary Ellen Lamb, Southern Illinois University, Renaissance Quarterly This collection is essential reading for any scholar of prose fiction before 1750. It will be much cited in future studies.

A. W. Lee, CHOICE An inclusive and judicious account of British fiction before 1750. ... Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Thomas Keymer is Chancellor Jackman Professor in the Arts and University Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He previously taught at St Anne's College, Oxford, where he remains a Supernumerary Fellow. He also serves as General Editor of The Review of English Studies and co-General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Samuel Richardson. His most recent books include The Cambridge Companion to Laurence Sterne (2009), the Oxford World's Classics edition of William Beckford's Vathek (2013) and Poetics of the Pillory: English Literature and Seditious Libel, 1660-1820, forthcoming in OUP's Clarendon Lectures in English series.

PART 1: FICTION IN THE MARKETPLACE; PART 2: EARLY MODERN FICTION - SOURCES AND MODES; PART 3: RESTORATION FICTION AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL