'Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant; and to undertake that which surpasseth his power!' The Caliph Vathek is dissolute and debauched, and hungry for knowledge. When the mysterious Giaour offers him boundless treasure and unrivalled power he is willing to sacrifice his god, the lives of innocent children, and his own soul to satisfy his obsession. Vathek's extraordinary journey to the subterranean palace of Eblis, and the terrif...

'I made him know his Name should be Friday, which was the Day I sav'd his Life...I likewise taught him to say Master' Robinson Crusoe's seafaring adventures are abruptly ended when he is shipwrecked, the solitary survivor on a deserted island. He gradually creates a life for himself, building a house, cultivating the land, and making a companion from the native whose life he saves. Daniel Defoe's enthralling story-telling and imaginatively detailed descriptions have ensur...

'No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.' Northanger Abbey is a comedy about reading and misreading-of books and the world-and about different kinds of peril, both imagined and real. In it, Austen's youngest heroine, Catherine Morland, must navigate financial disadvantage, social constraint, and sometimes quite ruthless manipulation. The absurdities of fashion and conspicuous consumption, voguish os...

The publication of Pamela in 1740 marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. It vividly describes a young servant's long resistance to the attempts of her predatory master to seduce her. It is a work of pioneering psychological complexity and a compelling and provocative study of power and its abuse. This edition is based on the original text of 1740, that aroused widespread controversy on its first appearance. - ;'Pamela under the Notion of being a Virtuous Modest Girl...

'I made him know his Name should be Friday, which was the Day I sav'd his Life...I likewise taught him to say Master' Robinson Crusoe's seafaring adventures are abruptly ended when he is shipwrecked, the solitary survivor on a deserted island. He gradually creates a life for himself, building a house, cultivating the land, and making a companion from the native whose life he saves. Daniel Defoe's enthralling story-telling and imaginatively detailed descriptions have ensur...

'What then is to be done? said Rasselas; the more we inquire, the less we can resolve.' Rasselas and his companions escape the pleasures of the 'happy valley' in order to make their 'choice of life'. By witnessing the misfortunes and miseries of others they may come to understand the nature of happiness, and value it more highly. Their travels and enquiries raise important practical and philosophical questions concerning many aspects of the human condition, including the b...

'I beg as soon as you get Fielding's Joseph Andrews, I fear in Ridicule of your Pamela and of Virtue in the Notion of Don Quixote's Manner, you would send it to me by the very first Coach.' (George Cheyne in a letter to Samuel Richardson, February 1742) Both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) were prompted by the success of Richardson's Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy parody. But in Shamela Fielding ...

On the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695, Thomas Macaulay wrote in his History of England, 'English literature was emancipated, and emancipated for ever, from the control of the government'. It's certainly true that the system of prior restraint enshrined in this Restoration measure was now at an end, at least for print. Yet the same cannot be said of government control, which came to operate instead by means of post-publication retribution, not pre-publication licensing, notably...

This 2004 volume offers an introduction to British literature that challenges the traditional divide between eighteenth-century and Romantic studies. Contributors explore the development of literary genres and modes through a period of rapid change. They show how literature was shaped by historical factors including the development of the book trade, the rise of literary criticism and the expansion of commercial society and empire. The first part of the volume focuses on broad themes inclu...

Best known today for the innovative satire and experimental narrative of Tristram Shandy (1759–67), Laurence Sterne was no less famous in his time for A Sentimental Journey (1768) and for his controversial sermons. Sterne spent much of his life as an obscure clergyman in rural Yorkshire. But he brilliantly exploited the sensation achieved with the first instalment of Tristram Shandy to become, by his death in 1768, a fashionable celebrity across Europe. In this Companion, specially commiss...

This volume offers an account of English literary culture in one of its most volatile and politically engaged moments. From the work of Milton and Marvell in the 1650s and 1660s through the brilliant careers of Dryden, Rochester, and Behn, Locke and Astell, Swift and Defoe, Pope and Montagu, the pressures and extremes of social, political, and sexual experience are everywhere reflected in literary texts: in the daring lyrics and intricate political allegories of this age, in the vitriol an...

Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe. This first edition credited the work's fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. Despite it...