ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to open new and richer discussions of novels and novelistic concerns in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain. It reveals ways in which any strict distinction between eighteenth-century literary traditions and Romantic literary traditions delimits the rich and complex readings of the works. As eighteenth-century scholarship has expanded its range, both historically and in its consideration of more popular and less elite cultural artifacts, so has what used to be known as "Romanticism". One important tension between scholars of the eighteenth century and Romanticists has long in their engagement with history and historical approaches. Building upon the expansion of British Romanticism to include important but neglected poets, from Felicia Hemans, Mary Robinson and Charlotte Smith to John Clare, the turn to fictions is predictable.
