Robert Mayer – författare

Walter Scott and Fame is a study of correspondences between Scott and socially and culturally diverse readers of his work in the English-speaking world in the early nineteenth century. Examining authorship, reading, and fame, the book is based on extensive archival research, especially in the collection of letters to Scott in the National Library of Scotland. Robert Mayer demonstrates that in Scott's literary correspondence constructions of authorship, reading strategies, and versions of fame are posited, even theorized. Scott's reader-correspondents invest him with power but they also attempt to tap into or appropriate some of his authority. Scott's version of authorship sets him apart from important contemporaries like Wordsworth and Byron, who adhered, at least as Scott viewed the matter, to a rarefied conception of the writer as someone possessed of extraordinary power. The idea of the author put in place by Scott in dialogue with his readers establishes him as a powerful figure who is nevertheless subject to the will of his audience. Scott's literary correspondence also demonstrates that the reader can be a very powerful figure and that we should regard reading not just as the reception of texts but also as the apprehension of an author-function. Thus, Scott's correspondence makes it clear that the relationship between authors and readers is a dynamic, often fraught, connection, which needs to be understood in terms of the new culture of celebrity that emerged during Scott's working life. Along with Byron, the study shows, Scott was at the centre of this transformation.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction on Screen offers an extensive introduction to cinematic representations of the eighteenth century, mostly derived from classic fiction of that period, and sheds light on the process of making prose fiction into film. The contributors provide a variety of theoretical and critical approaches to the process of bringing literary works to the screen. They consider a broad range of film and television adaptations, including several versions of Robinson Crusoe; three films of Moll Flanders; American, British, and French television adaptations of Gulliver's Travels, Clarissa, Tom Jones, and Jacques le fataliste; Wim Wender's film version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice Years; the controversial film of Diderot's La Religieuese; and French and Anglo-American motion pictures based on Les Liaisons dangereuses among others. This book will appeal to students and scholars of literature and film alike.

This new study of the origins of the English novel argues that the novel emerged from historical writing. Examining historical writers and forms frequently neglected by earlier scholars, Robert Mayer shows that in the seventeenth century historical discourse embraced not only 'history' in its modern sense, but also fiction, polemic, gossip, and marvels. Mayer thus explains why Defoe's narratives were initially read as history. It is the acceptance of the claims to historicity, the study argues, that differentiates Defoe's fictions from those of writers like Thomas Deloney and Aphra Behn, important writers who nevertheless have figured less prominently than Defoe in discussions of the novel. Mayer ends by exploring the theoretical implications of the history-fiction connection. His study makes an important contribution to the continuing debate about the emergence of what we now call the novel in Britain in the eighteenth century.

This new study of the origins of the English novel argues that the novel emerged from historical writing. Examining historical writers and forms frequently neglected by earlier scholars, Robert Mayer shows that in the seventeenth century historical discourse embraced not only 'history' in its modern sense, but also fiction, polemic, gossip, and marvels. Mayer thus explains why Defoe's narratives were initially read as history. It is the acceptance of the claims to historicity, the study argues, that differentiates Defoe's fictions from those of writers like Thomas Deloney and Aphra Behn, important writers who nevertheless have figured less prominently than Defoe in discussions of the novel. Mayer ends by exploring the theoretical implications of the history-fiction connection. His study makes an important contribution to the continuing debate about the emergence of what we now call the novel in Britain in the eighteenth century.

Loan sharks may conjure up an image of tough guys in fedoras looking to make a profit off of desperate people in dire financial straits; but in reality, lenders who advance small sums of cash at high interest rates until payday existed long before organized crime entered the trade. Today the businesses that fill this niche in the credit market prefer the name "payday lenders" rather than loan sharks, but most large cities are still a hotbed of usurious lending, and the landscapes are dotted with their inviting and brightly colored storefronts. Despite their more respectable name, these predatory lenders have endured through regulation, prohibition, and the rise and fall of the mob since the late 1800s. In this intriguing and accessible book, Mayer aptly assesses the consequences of high-interest lending—both for the people who borrow at such steep prices and for society as a whole. He argues that although some consumers gain from borrowing at high rates, payday lending in its modern form consistently traps many of the wage earners who pawn their postdated checks, leaving them worse off than they were before. Because payday lending regulations vary widely throughout the country, Mayer chose to focus his story on Chicago, a city that serves as a fine representative of the legacy of loan sharking. Quick Cash will engage policy analysts, economists, and regional historians, as wells as general readers interested in the fascinating story behind these unscrupulous lending operations that feed off America's current tough economic times.