Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the value of the autobiographical, but Charlotte Smith made a much more nuanced use of the self than was the norm, moving beyond a simple presentation of a unified subjectivity. It examines Beachy Head within two traditions for which Smith's writing acted as a prototype: the Romantic emphasis on the unknown and unknowable as a figure, paradoxically, of knowledge, and the woman writer's investigation of sensibility as emotionally flexible as well as stifling. The book discusses the familiar Smithian theme of exile takes on a new political resonance in light of the Alien Act of 1793. It shows that how each novelist treats the theme of seduction within their texts and discusses how the two novelists use their texts to reflect on the very nature of novel-writing in an age of generic transition and definition.