This investigation of literary history writing between 1770 and 1820 identifies the mode's distinction from canon formation as central to its cultural vitality. Using secret history, memoir and the novel, amongst other sources, it invites a re-thinking of literary history's place in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century print culture.

'...[a] wide-ranging, thoroughly researched study....[and] a panoramic exploration of an emergent genre that became instrumental to the teaching of English literature.' - Max Fincher, TLS

'...an impressive and long overdue 'history of literary history' from 1770-1820. Combining the intricacies of close reading with the larger historical perspectives of material and book history, it carefully and scrupulously navigates the much-neglected waters of the period's literary history.' - Porscha Fermanis, University College Dublin, British Association for Romantic Studies

'What re-emerges as the result of London's survey is a story of the 'hardening of genre borders' (p. 5) first between history and literature, and eventually between genres within literature and literary studies, which emptied literary history of its radical potential... the force of London's original claim comes from the detailed synopses of arguments that refuse to fit into received notions of the genre's evolution. London's own voice comes through in the arrangement of the voices of the dissenters and it can only enrich our knowledge of what became of literary history in the nineteenth century.' - Tommi Kakko, English Studies

Autorentext

APRIL LONDON is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is the author of Women and Property in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel (1999).

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: WRITING AND REWRITING LIVES Writing Lives Rewriting Lives: Revolution, Reaction, and Apostasy PART II: LITERARY HISTORY AND BOOKS Bibliomania and Antiquarianism Literary History and Literary Specimens PART III: ISAAC D'ISTAELI AND LITERARY HISTORY Apostasy and Exclusion The Structures of Opinion PART IV: THE GENRES OF LITERARY HISTORY The 'whole mind of the nation' Literary History, Periodicals, Lectures Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index