The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Fiction [Hardcover]

This book argues that representations of popular culture in the eighteenth-century novel served as repositories of traditional social values and played a role in Britain's transition to an imperial state.The Politics of Custom in Eighteenth-Century British Revitalizing the Moral Economy in the Wake of the South Sea Bubble: Moll Flanders (1722) and Roxana (1724) Pamela 's 'Neat Country Apparel' (1740): Ballads and Scribbling Servants in the Literary Marketplace 'The Real Soul of a Man in Her Breast': Memoirs of Females Soldiers and Military Nationalism, 1740-1750 'Lost in a Mob of Impudent Plebeians': Landed Gentry, British Identity, and Popular Culture in Humphry Clinker (1771) Caleb Williams (1794): Radical Incursions into Customary Politics and Genre

Bowen makes theories of class relevant to the eighteenth century by understanding them in terms of culture rather than identity. The theoretical and historical gains of this shift are enormous: 'plebian,' 'middling,' and 'patrician' are transformed from static categories into dynamic terms, relational to a concept of English national culture early in the century and responding to radical politics as they change into the nineteenth century. - Kristina Straub, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University

At last! A book on eighteenth-century fiction that acknowledges and investigates what the novel borrowed from the chapbooks and broadside ballads of customary culture. Bowen shows us how the laboring class popular forms authorized and infused the fledgling novel. - Ruth Perry, Professor of Literature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology