This book recovers the importance of a major figure in eighteenth-century British fiction: the Heroine of Disinterest. The disinterested heroine was no stereotype but a crucial figure in modernizing identity, bringing to life the ideal of character as the product of experience and reflection rather than inheritance and lineage.

Autorentext
VIRGINIA H. COPE is an assistant professor of English at Ohio State University, USA.

Inhalt
Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Feminizing Disinterest Burney's Heroines of Disinterest Strategic Disavowals in A Simple Story Gothic Properties Property Recollected in Tranquility Conclusion: Austenian Disinterest Notes Bibliography Index