The Eighteenth-century Novel and the Secularization of Ethics

Download or read book The Eighteenth-century Novel and the Secularization of Ethics written by Carol Ann Stewart and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linking the decline in Church authority in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries with the increasing respectability of fiction, Carol Stewart provides a new perspective on the rise of the novel. The resulting readings of novels by authors such as Samuel Richardson, Sarah Fielding, Frances Sheridan, Charlotte Lennox, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, William Godwin, and Jane Austen shed light on the literary marketplace and the status of writers.