BREAN HAMMOND is Professor of English at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is the author of numerous books and articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writing, including Professional Imaginative Writing in England 1670-1740 (1997). He is a former President of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.SHAUN REGAN is Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature at Queen's University Belfast, UK. He has published articles on Sterne, print culture, and the culture of politeness. He was formerly a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin.

'A wide-ranging and sophisticated study of the novel that neatly combines a survey of the history and theory of the novel with a series of insightful readings of some of the major works of the eighteenth-century. Best of all, it's unfailingly lively and readable and brings the eighteenth-century novel to life.' - Jack Lynch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction: Modelling the NovelMissing Parts: Fiction to DefoeNovels and Anti-Novels: Contesting FictionsTeaching Readers to Read: Richardson and FieldingRenewing the Novel: Novelty, Originality, and New DirectionsThe Sympathetic Strain: Sterne and Sentimental FictionNarrating the Nation: Leisure, Luxury, and PolitenessConclusion: Making the Novel, Reading the NovelBibliographyIndex.