New-in-Paperback: The Secret Life of Things

Animals, Objects, and It-Narratives in Eighteenth-Century England

Mark Blackwell (Ed.)

2023
372 pages
$37.95
ISBN 9781684484706
Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture

Enriching and complicating the history of fiction between Richardson and Fielding at mid-century and Austen at the turn of the century, this collection focuses on it-narratives, a once popular form largely forgotten by readers and critics alike, and advances important work on consumer culture and the theory of things. The contributors bring new texts - and new ways of thinking about familiar ones - to our notice. Topics range from period debates about copyright to the complex relationships with object-riddled sentimental fictions, from anti-Semitism in Chrysal to jingoistic imperialism in The Adventures of a Rupee. Essays situate it-narratives in a variety of contexts: changing attitudes toward occult powers, the development of still-life painting, the ethical challenges of pet ownership, the cult of Sterne and the appearance of genre fiction, the emergence of moral-didactic children's literature, and a better-known tradition of Victorian thing-narratives. Stylistically and thematically consistent, the essays in this collection approach it-narratives from various theoretical and historical vantage points, sketching the cultural biography of a neglected literary form.

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Reviews
"The Secret Life of Things serves to encapsulate the most important work done recently on eighteenth-century it-narratives, while advancing the field significantly. It is likely to remain the definitive treatment of the eighteenth-century it-narrative for years to come." - Adam Potkay, author of Hope: A Literary History

"Mark Blackwell has assembled a group of lively, provocative, and readable essays. We are lucky to have them. . . . The Secret Life of Things is an erudite and enjoyable guide, well-written and wide-ranging." - Review of English Studies

"Blackwell's collection marks the arrival of a substantial new body of work. Admirably inclusive . . . The Secret Life of Things will be useful for anyone who is working on objects in eighteenth-century narrative." - TLS

"[This] is a valuable collection for eighteenth-century studies and for 'thing-theory' more generally." - Modern Philology

"[This volume] represents essentially the best-case scenario for the edited collection of literary criticism that is organized not for a series or as primarily a teaching tool but as the best way of compiling a field's state of knowledge on an emerging topic . . . an indispensable resource for scholars working on a host of topics related to the it-narrative and the animated objects of eighteenth-century literature." - SEL

"Complex and sophisticated. . . . Blackwell's volume both carefully scrutinizes it-narratives and provides interesting perspectives on them." - Style

"The collection . . . adroitly consolidates, assesses, and extends the best work available in this fruitful intersection of theory and culture. The book boasts some of the most distinguished scholarly critics of the 18th-century operating in the field today, and one finds herein numerous instances of scintillating and luminous critical prose. . . . Recommended." - CHOICE

"By bringing our attention to a genre that realizes the apparently impossible condition of material objects behaving as narrative protagonists, Blackwell's collection destabilizes our received impressions of eighteenth-century narrative as an evolving institution of realism . . . [I]ntriguing analyses and claims fill The Secret Life of Things." - Eighteenth-Century Life

About the editor:

Mark Blackwell is a professor of English at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. He is the editor of British It-Narratives, 1750-1830 and his work has appeared in ECTI, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Life, The Cambridge History of the English Novel, and The Blackwell Companion to the English Novel.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press