5 History and Literature of the Time

Dr. Mosarraf Hossain

Content:

•  Introduction
•  History :
  •  Last Years of Elizabeth
  •  James I
  •  Charles I : Civil War
  •  Puritan Interregnum : Oliver Cromwell
  •  Charles II : Restoration
  •  James II : Glorious Revolution
  •  William III and Mary II
  •  William III
  •  Queen Anne
  •  George I, George II & George III
•  Literature:
  •  Culmination of Elizabethan Age or Age of Shakespeare:
    • Poetry:
    • Drama: Four Stages of Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art.
    • Prose:
  •  Jacobean Age:
    • Drama:
    • Poetry:
    • Prose:
  •  Caroline Age:
    • Drama:
    • Poetry:
    • Prose:
  •  Commonwealth Period:
    • Drama:
    • Poetry:
    • Prose:
  •  Restoration Period:
    • Drama: Heroic Tragedies; Comedy of Manners.
    • Poetry:
    • Prose:
  •  Augustan Period:
    • Poetry:
    • Drama:
    • Prose: Periodical Essay; Novel
  •  Age of Sensibility:
    • Poetry: Pre-Romantic Poetry; Graveyard Poetry
    • Prose: Sentimental Novel; Gothic Novel Drama:
•  Conclusion

Introduction:

Some of the most precious and productive periods in the history of English Literature fall within the timeline 1590-1798. The tide of Renaissance after being generated in Italy in the late fourteenth century reached the shore of England in late Fifteenth century. It had its trickling impact upon life and literature of English people till early Seventeenth century. During the middle and later half of the Seventeenth century there had been further a rapid development of science and rebirth of classical ideals that resulted in the beginning of a new, rational enquiry, scientific and objective outlook in life as well as in literature. In between 1590 and 1798, a host of varying litterateurs and literary genres had emerged that gifted some of the ever-remembered literary treasures not only to the reservoir of English literature but also to that of world literature.

Our discussion would focus on two aspects- history and literature- of the time (1590-1798)

History:

England during this time was under the rule of three reigning Houses:

1. The House of Tudor:
   • Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603)
2. The House of Stuart:
   • James I (1603-1625)
   • Charles I (1625-1649)
   • 1649-1660 (The Puritan Interregnum)
   • Charles II (1660-1685) 
   • James II (1685-1688)
   • Mary II & William III (1689-1694)
   • William III (1689-1702) 
   • Anne (1702-1714)
3. House of the Hanover:
   • George I (1714-1727)
   • George II (1727-1760)
   • George III (1760-1820)

Last Years of Elizabeth: (1590-1603)

Often called the Virgin Queen or Gloriana, Elizabeth was the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. She steadied England during a period of political and religious turmoil and set her nation’s course to become the leading Protestant world power for the centuries to come. Under the adroit rule of Queen Elizabeth England experienced an all-round development in socio-politico-economical sectors. That perhaps provided the Renaissance mind with a congenial environment to explore physical as well psychological territories never attempted so far. She died in 1603, childless.

James I (1603-1625):

The first king of the House of Stuart was James VI of Scotland (son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots) who became James I of England. Important event during early days of his reign was the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. James I was against the spreading of Puritanism in England. He believed in the “divine rights of kings”. He wanted a quiet and submissive Parliament but Parliament with many of its Puritan members exhibited an independent temper and opposed the king in many issues. That led to the widening of rift between the House of Stuart and the Puritans.

Charles I (1625-1649):

After the death of James I, Charles I sat on the English throne in 1625. During his reign English socio-political life was completely divided into two sections – the Royalist (also called Cavaliers) who supported the king and his policies, and the Roundheads (so called for their typical haircuts), who were the supporters of Puritanism and the Parliament. The snowballing tension between the king and the Parliament culminated to a bloody Civil War that broke out in 1642. The Roundheads led by Oliver Cromwell came out victorious. Charles I was tried and found guilty and was eventually beheaded in January, 1648. His son Charles II took refuge in France accompanied by some of the Royalists.

Puritan Interregnum (1649-1660):

England now came to be known as a Commonwealth Period and began to be ruled by the Rump Parliament (the reduced part of the Long Parliament after expulsion of members who were against the plan to try King Charles I for high treason) and eventually in 1653 Oliver Cromwell with the aid of his soldiers disbanded the Rump Parliament, and government was then known to be Protectorate with Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector. During the Puritanical era several Acts were passed to ban the Theatres houses and other kinds of entertainment, like, duelling, horse racing, cock fighting, bear baiting, swearing etc. During the reign of Cromwell’s unworthy son Richard English people grew completely disillusioned with the new government and yearned to return to the older order of monarchical system. As a result, Charles II was called back to England and made the king of England in 1660 and this is famously known as the Restoration of Monarchy.

Charles II (1660-1685):

With the coronation of Charles II not only the Stuarts were restored but also socially the nobles, the gentry, the bishops, the Anglican Church, etc. were also restored. Charles II reopened the theatre houses and all others means of recreation. Charles II and his followers who had enjoyed a gay life in France during their exile tended to introduce that type of foppery and looseness in England too. The strict moral codes that were introduced during the Puritan regime were revoked that led to an atmosphere of gaiety, cheerfulness, licentiousness, moral laxity and corruption in the court and to some extent in the society. Another political development of the period was the formation of two major political parties in England. The supporter of Charles I in the English Civil War developed into the Tory Party, and the Whig Party was formed, in opposition to the court, with the supporters of the Parliament. There were two great calamities in the Restoration period. One was the great Plague of London in 1665 that took about 68,000 human lives. The other was the devastating Fire of London in 1666 that destroyed almost half of the London in just five days in between 2-7 September. During Restoration age there was a rapid development of science that resulted in the beginning of rational enquiry and, scientific and objective outlook.

James II (1685-1688):

Charles II died in 1685. His brother took the name James II and succeeded him. A believer in staunch Catholicism and absolute monarchy James II was not liked but somehow tolerated by the people of England. They were very keen to see his Protestant daughter Mary to be his successor. In the meantime he had a son and they thought that Catholicism would never end. So they wanted King James to go and invited Mary’s husband, William the Orange to occupy the throne of England. No sooner had William the Orange landed on the shore of England than James relinquished the throne and fled to France. This was proverbially called the Glorious Revolution of 1688 because not a drop of blood was shed in ousting the monarch.

Mary II & William III (1689-1694):

Mary II and William the Orange ruled jointly from 1689 till Mary’s death in 1694 after which William of Orange reigned single-handedly till his death in 1702.

Queen Anne (1702-1714):

After the death of William III, Anne, the last ruler of Stuart family and the younger sister of Mary ascended the throne and ruled England from 1702 to 1714. It was prosperous period without much of the religious and the political violence of the last century.

The Hanovers:

With Queen Anne ended the long rule of the Stuarts and English throne started to be occupied by the House of Hanover for over almost two centuries. George I ruled from 1714 to 1727; George II from 1727 to 1760 and George III reigned from 1760 to 1820. The Eighteenth century saw some important events in its duration. James Watt invented Steam Engine in 1784. By the time, England began to experience Agrarian as well as Industrial Revolution. The important French Revolution began in Paris in 1789. All these defining factors had palpable impact upon English life and literature.

Literature:

Now, our discussion would underline the literary periods of 1590-1798. For the convenience of our discussion the literature of the time can primarily be categorised into two major sections- the Renaissance Period and the Neo-classical Period which are further sub-divided into different periods or ages as bellow-

The Renaissance Period:

1590-1603 – The Culmination of Elizabethan Era (The Age of Shakespeare)

1603-1625 – Jacobean Age

1625-1649 – Caroline Age

1649- 1660- The Puritan Age (Puritan Interregnum)

The Neo-classical Period:

1660-1700 – Restoration Period (The Age of Dryden)

1700-1745 – Augustan Age (The Age of Pope)

1700 -1798 – The Age of Sensibility (The Age of Johnson)

The Culmination of Elizabethan Age or the Age of Shakespeare (1590-1603):

Due to effect of the Renaissance Humanism, anthrop-centric ideas flavoured the English life and literature in the Elizabethan Age. It was the golden age of literary creation.

Poetry: The new-born genre of English Sonnet having been introduced by Wyatt and Earl of Surrey in the Elizabethan England and been matured by Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, culminated to the peak of its glory in the masterly hands of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote in altogether 154 sonnets. In them Shakespeare has departed from the conventional Petrarchan theme and techniques of sonnet writing and celebrated masculine friendship (Sonnet no.1-126) in three quatrains and a concluding couplet with the rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. His long poems- Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were written in between 1592-94.

Drama: Dramatic literature reached its peak in the last days of Elizabethan era. Major dramatists of the time were Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson etc. According to Reuben Post Halleck, Shakespeare’s dramatic art underwent growth and evolution through four stages:

•  Sanguine period, full of exuberance of youthful love and imagination. Belonged to this group plays probably written before 1995- The Comedy of Errors,  A  Midsummer  Night’s  Dream,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Richard  II  and
•  Second period, from 1995 to 1601, comparatively less exaggerative having deep insight into human nature. As You like It, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Henry V belonged to it.
•  Third phase, 1601-1608, a phase full of ‘fitful fever’, disappointments and sufferings produced great tragedies- Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear,
•  Fourth phase, 1608-1613 (already in Jacobean Age) gave birth to mostly tragedy-comedies and romances- Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest With their variety of subject matter, celebration of multifaceted life and some age conquering characters, these plays can easily be considered among the finest flowers of the English literature.

Prose: Francis Bacon, father of English essays published the first edition of his Essays in 1597. A typical Renaissance writer Bacon wrote aphoristic essays full of practical wisdom.

Jacobean period (1603-1625)

During the Jacobean period literature was given a lot of importance and it was at its glorious point. James I was a good champion of literature and under his patronization the first Authorised Version of the Bible got published in 1611.

Drama: It was the time when Shakespeare’s most of the greatest tragedies and tragicomedies and the Romances were written. However, Jacobean drama especially tragedy suffered a decadence in the post Shakespearean time. Major dramatists writing at the time were Sir Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and George Chapman. However Ben Jonson who had already started writing a new kind of realistic comedies called Comedy of Humours in the closing Elizabethan years produced some matured plays. Jonson based his comedy on the medieval physiological theory of the ‘four humours’. According to the theory our body is made up with four principal humours- blood, phlegm, choler or yellow bile and black bile or melancholy- and any imbalance in the proportion of these humours in the body would give rise a humorous character. Most of the notable comedies of humours written by Jonson are Everyman in His Humour, Everyman out of His Humour, Volpone, or The Fox (1606), Epicoene, or The Silent Women (1609) and The Alchemist (1611). Another popular style of drama was the Revenge Tragedy popularized by John Webster and Thomas Kyd.

Poetry: In the realm of poetry this age saw a radical break from the Petrarchan tradition- a sea change in terms of the novelty in the ways of expression and forms. The poets of the innovative lyrics (‘strong lines’) were much later branded as Metaphysical Poets. The flag bearer among them was, of course, John Donne who composed some wonderful lyrics. Other poet of the group was George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan et al. They wrote on Christian mysticism and eroticism. Their poetry was marked by extensive use of metaphysical conceits, scholastic allusions, paradoxes, wit, oxymoron etc.

Prose: This was the period in prose writing of Bacon, of John Donne’s prose sermons and of Robert Burton’s famous Anatomy of Melancholy.

Caroline Period (1625-1649):

The age derives its name from the term ‘carolus’, the Latin version of Charles, the ruler of the time.

Drama: As a consequence of the Civil War, Theatres were closed in September, 1642 and that marked a natural death for drama that once showed such a heights of achievement.

Poetry: The Metaphysical Poets continued to compose poems in this age. Moreover, another group of lyric poets better known as Cavaliers Poets were writing elegant, witty and polished lyrics of love and gallantry. They were the hardcore supporters of Charles I. The group, also known as ‘Son of Ben’ due to their admiration for, and following of Ben Jonson, included Richard Lovelace, John Suckling, Thomas Carew, Robert Herrick and others. In the meantime, the great poet John Milton appeared on the stage of English literature and began composing poems. His Nativity Ode, L’Allegro and Ill Penseroso, Comus and the great elegy Lycidas was published in 1629, 1633, 1634 and 1637 respectively.

Prose: Milton’s greatest prose work Areopagitica or the Liberty of Unlicenced Printing was published in 1944. Besides, this age produced the religious prose writings like Religio Medici (1643) by the Oxford scholar Sir Thomas Browne.

Commonwealth Period (1649-1600):

Drama almost disappeared for eighteen years after the Puritans closed the public theatre in 1642.

Poetry: Poets like Henry Vaughan, Edmund Waller, Abraham Cowley, Sir William Davenant, and Andrew Marvell were still writing poems then. But the greatest poetical product of this age was Milton’s poetical works – Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671) and the poetic play Samson Agonistes (1671).

Prose: But the age was best known for its prose pamphlets, especially the political pamphlets of John Milton. Hobbs wrote his famous political treaties Leviathan (1651). Other notable prose writers who were writing in this time were Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter and Izaac Walton et al.

Restoration Period (1600-1700):

Restoration age marks the beginning of the Neo-classicism in literature and a complete break with the Renaissance period. The literature of the Restoration period is completely a mirror to the society reflecting the very spirit of the age. The literature became realistic concerning with life and manners of town people. There was a kind of tendency among writers to imitate the classical writers in theme as well as in the forms and manner of expression. John Dryden is the representative litterateur of the age that is why Restoration age is sometimes called the Age of Dryden.

Drama: After a long gap, dramatic literature got a new lease of life following the opening of the theatre houses. There are two finest gifts of Restoration Period to English drama- one is the rise of Restoration Heroic Tragedy and the other being the Restoration Comedy of Manners.

Heroic Tragedies “deal with overdrawn characters, exaggerated passions, sentimental flamboyance and melodramatic conflicts between love or desire and political or military or domestic responsibilities”. Most important writer of heroic plays was John Dryden. His well-known plays are, Tyrannic Love, The Conquest of Granada, All for Love, Indian Queen etc. Other practitioners of the genre were Thomas Otway (Venice Preserved), Nathaniel Lee (The Rival Queens or The Death of Alexander the Great), John Crowne, Thomas Southern, Elkanah Settle et al.

Restoration Comedy of Manners exhibited the artificial manners of the high class society of the Eighteenth century England. These realistic comedies largely displayed the amorous and legacy intrigues, witty remarks, sparkling dialogues and ‘repartees’ or the verbal fencing between the young beaux and the belles. William Congreve is the best and the finest writer of them. His The Way of the World is a sample comedy in this regard. Other notable plays by him are Love for Love, The Double Dealer, and The Old Bachelor etc. George Etherege, William Wycherley, George Farquhar, and Vanbrugh were other practitioners of the genre.

Poetry: The Restoration poetry laid the foundation for classical school of poetry in England which culminated later in the Eighteenth century. The poetry of the age was characterised by the emphasis on forms and realism, by intellect and wit. Sometimes they tended to be satiric in spirit. They are written predominantly in heroic couplet. The major name in the field of poetry was undoubtedly John Dryden. His Absalom and Achitophel, The Medal are politico-satire; Macfleknoe is a personal satire whereas The Hind and the Panther is a religious satires. Apart from Dryden, another unforgettable verse satirist Samuel Butler wrote Hudibras (1684) attacking the Puritans.

Prose: In prose also Dryden left an indelible mark in the form of Essay on Dramatic Poesy, A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire and Preface to the Fables etc. John Locke wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Treaties on Government and Thoughts on Education. The religious writer John Bunyan wrote his book Pilgrim’s Progress in this age. Moreover, Oroonoko by Aphra Behn posed to be a precursor of novel. The writing of Diaries and Memoir was in vogue then. Here two names deserve to be mentioned- John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys.

Augustan Age (1700-1745):

The term Augustan was applied as a catch-word to draw an analogy between the English literature of the first half of Eighteenth century and the brilliant Latin literary period of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid under the Roman Emperor Augustus (27 B.C. to A.D 14). The classical poets and critics were believed to be the best models and ultimate standards of literary taste in this age. The literature of this period showed some common features:

• More emphasis on forms than spirit.
• Predominance of logic and reason.
• Spontaneity and simplicity sacrificed for elegance and correctness.
• Literature was confined to the town life- to the coffee houses and drawing rooms.
• Nature meant to the human nature of good sense and mannerism.
• Commonly satirical and didactic dwelling upon subjects related to social, political and even personal.
• Language and diction of poetry was stereotyped, artificial, stilted, and mannered. Heroic couplet was the predominant verse pattern.

The Augustan age was remarkable for its variety of literary outputs.

Poetry: The absolute leader of the Augustan poetry was Alexander Pope. His poetical oeuvre includes poetical translations of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Pastorals, Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712), The Dunciad (1728) Epistle to Arbuthnot (1735), Essay on Man etc.

Drama: In dramatic literature the earlier Restoration model of Comedy of Manners were gradually replaced by a kind of Sentimental Comedy in the Augustan period. Noteworthy Sentimental Comedy were Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shaft, Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers, The Tender Husband, The Funeral, Mrs. Centlivre’s The Gamester, Taverner’s The Artful Wife, John Kelley’s The Married Philosophers and so on.

Prose: It has rightly been said that Eighteenth century is the age of “prose and reason”. Tremendous development of prose literature was discernible in the hands of Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Daniel Defoe. Swift wrote on politics, religion, books, human follies and foibles etc. His famous satires were Gulliver’s Travels, The Battle of Books, A Tale of a Tub etc. Daniel Defoe had no less contribution to the development of Augustan prose. His most important gift to fiction writing was his semi fictional work Robinson Crusoe. His other works were Moll Flanders (1722), Colonel Jack (1722) and the Unfortunate Mistress or Roxana (1924) etc.

But the most precious gifts that the Eighteenth century gave to English literature were two new-born literary genres:

• a) The Periodical Essays: The Periodical Essays provided a document of the time, the way of life and the thinking of the age. It was invented by Richard Steele and the first established periodical was the Tatler by Steele. Steele’s friend Joseph Addison also contributed to the Tatler. After that Steele launched the most famous and popular periodical The Spectator in 1711 whose fame primarily depended on Addison’s 274 essays contributed to it. His chief creation was the fictional character Sir Roger de Coverley. Another periodical was Dr Samuel Johnson’s the Idler.
• b) The Novel: The Eighteenth century marks the childhood and pre-youth of the English novel. There are factors that contributed to the emergence of novel:
  •  The rise of middleclass as aftermath of enormous growth of commerce and industry.
  •  With the dissemination of democratic ideals, the importance of common men came to be recognised.
  •  The desire for freedom from the shackle of classicism.
  •  The decline of the drama and realism in novel
  •  Increase in the number of readers, especially the women readers.

The first full-fledged English novel appeared in 1940 named Pamela by Samuel Richardson. This was followed by Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742). Fielding’s Tom Jones is a fine example of Picaresque Novel dealing with the life-journey of a rogue.

The Age of Sensibility (1745-1985/1798):

The age started with the following year of Pope’s death and extended up to 1985, the following year of Dr Johnson’s death. Alternative dates frequently proposed for end of this period are 1789 and 1798. Literature of the age was influenced by some factors, like, industrial and agrarian revolutions, expansion of the city and depopulation of countryside, poor condition of workers, new class conflicts, pollution of the environment and the resultant reaction against urbanism and industrialisation and a new emphasis on the beauty and value of nature. As a reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan age the literature of this period showed to some extent leaning towards sentimentalism both in poetry and prose.

Age of Sensibility is sometimes described as the Age of Johnson due to his and some of his follower’s multifaceted contribution to various genres of literature.

Poetry: Johnson wrote in the early days of his writing career two satiric poems modelled on the Roman poet Juvenal – The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and London. Two important poetical movement were felt in this age-

Pre-Romantic Poetry (Pre-cursors of Romantic Revival): A group of poets, as if tired of the neoclassical ideals of reason and wit, showed a predilection for, and an interest in imagination, strangeness, fantasies, exotic tales, popular and dialect literature, medieval and northern folklore, common life, humble people, plain language and of course in Nature. Most of them were, as if like Mr. Facing Both ways, looking simultaneously at the Neo-classical past and Romantic future. These poets are branded sometimes as transitional poets or pre romantic poets or precursors of Romantic Revival. Noteworthy are James Thomson (Seasons), Oliver goldsmith (The Traveller, The Deserted Village), Thomas Gray (Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard), William Collins (Ode on the Popular Superstition of the Highland), William Cowper (The Task), Robert Burns (Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect), William Blake (Poetical Sketches, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience) et al.

Graveyard Poetry: Of the Pre-Romantic poets, some focused on the subject of death and bereavement evoking the horror of death’s physical manifestation and suggesting the transitory nature of human life. Elegiac in tone these poems abound in gloomy imagery. The most famous graveyard poems were Robert Blair’s The Grave, Edward Young’s The Complaint, or Nights Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality and Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard etc.

Prose: Dr. Johnson’s contribution to English prose is long lasting. His Dictionary of the English Language got published in 1755. Other prose works include annotated version of William Shakespeare’s Plays, Rasselas, Lives of Most Eminent English Poets etc. James Boswell wrote biography, Live of Samuel Johnson.

Novel: In novel writing we see some sort maturity in and the proliferation of generic types in the mid and later part of the 18th century.

Sentimental Novels: The Tradition of writing sentimental novel that had already started with Richardson and Fielding went forward with Oliver Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, Laurence Stern’s Tristram Shandy and Sentimental Journey, Henry Brooke’s The Fool of Quality, Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling etc. There also we see the first Novel of Manners Evelina by Frances Burney.

Gothic novel: Some of the novelists of the age combined in their writing elements of horror, mystery and romance. They recreated gloomy, grotesque and medieval atmosphere in their works. This vogue was introduced in English by Horace Walpole’s masterpiece The Castle of Otranto (1965). Other samples of the genre are Anne Radcliff’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) Mathew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk, William Beckford’s oriental novel Vathek and so on.

Drama: In drama we see two important Irish writers Oliver Goldsmith and Sheridan on the stage. They reacted to some extent against the sentimental comedy of the 18th century by writing plays closer to the style of Restoration Comedy. Goldsmith’s golden hand produced The Good–Natured Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer. Sheridan’s noteworthy works were The Rivals 1775, The School for Scandal and The Critic.

Conclusion:

With the publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798) jointly by William Shakespeare and S.T. Coleridge, Neo-classicism officially ended and a new age called Romantic Age officially started in the English literary world.

In a nutshell, English History and Literature passed colourful phases of its career during the years: 1590-1798. The autumn of Elizabethan Age produced plenty and abundance of literary mellow-fruits; the civil-war-years marred and crushed them but as a result of which, rich wine oozed out in the following periods to come; the neoclassical periods stored the old wine in well-designed bottle which was packed in industries and was transitioned by Mr. Looking-both-ways to the cellar of the Romantics who were to drink and escape into the world of imagination.

Reference

• Ashok, Padmaja. The Social History of England. Chennai: Orient BlackSwan, 2011. Print
• DeMaria,  Robert,  Jr.  The  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature.  Ed.  John  Richetti. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.
• Dobson, Michael, Stanley Wells, et al. Ed. 2015. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford UP. 2nd Edition. Print.
• Hackett, Helen. A Short History of English Renaissance Drama. London: I. B. Tauris, 2012. Print.
• Seager, Nicholas. The Rise of the Novel. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.