Reading Fictions, 1660-1740

'In this elegant, informed, and daring study, Kate Loveman presents an argument that lies athwart the critical preoccupation with the genealogy of the novel. Loveman shows that what we call the novel emerged from within a rich culture of tale-telling in which fictions of all kinds were endemic to coffee house circles, to a world in which detecting shams endowed social prestige and which therefore encouraged skeptical reading within an essentially ludic culture, whose habits persisted even after the emergence of sentimental modes of apprehension.' Richard Kroll, University of California, Irvine, and author of Restoration Drama and 'The Circle of Commerce': Tragicomedy, Politics, and Trade in the Seventeenth Century (2007) '... an impressive work of scholarship...’ Review of English Studies ’Sometimes common sense, especially when joined by excellent research, a clear head, and a prose style resolutely devoted to informing rather than impressing, rises to the level of genius. Reading Fictions is in this class, and is required reading for students of both Augustan irony and the early novel.’ Eighteenth-Century Fiction ’... learned, audacious, and gracefully written... No student of Defoe or Swift [...] can afford to neglect Loveman’s extremely powerful chapters on those writers. From this point forward, any study of the novel’s Restoration and early eighteenth-century origins which fails to pick up on Loveman’s ideas will be fit only for posterior uses.’ Modern Language Review '... Loveman has [succeeded] in surveying so broad a field and distilling such a cogent argument from her evidence.' Royal Stuart Journal 'Loveman’s arguments are subtle and always alive to the nuances of particular biographical circumstances and publishing history; a great deal of the material is unfamiliar, and that which is familiar is seen in a new and interesting way.' Modern Philology 'This scholarly and elegantly written book does not only provide new approaches to