New Directions in the History of the Novel challenges received views of literary history and sets out new areas for research. A re-examination of the nature of prose fiction in English and its study from the Renaissance to the 21st century, it will become required reading for teachers and students of the novel and its history.

Jonathan Arac, University of Pittsburgh, USANancy Armstrong, Duke University, USA Rachel Sagner Buurma, Swarthmore College, USASimon Gikandi, Princeton University, USA David James, Queen Mary, University of London, UKThomas Keymer, University of Toronto, CanadaPam Morris, independent scholar, UKAndrew Nash, University of Reading, UKPatrick Parrinder, University of Reading, UK Cyrus R.K. Patell, New York University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesMatthew Pethers, University of Nottingham, UKMax Saunders, King's College London, UKDeborah Lindsay Williams, New York University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Mark Williams, Victoria University, New ZealandNicola Wilson, University of Reading, UK

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors 1. Introduction PART I: THE MATERIAL TEXT 2. Novel Designs: Manipulating the Page in English Fiction, 1660-1780; Thomas Keymer 3. Textual Instability and the Contemporary Novel: Reading Janice Galloway's The Trick is to Keep Breathing On and Off the Page; Andrew Nash 4. The Early American Novel in Fragments: Writing and Reading Serial Fiction in the Post-Revolutionary United States; Matthew Pethers 5. Archive Fever: The Publishers' Archive and the History of the Novel; Nicola Wilson PART II: LITERARY HISTORIES: QUESTIONS OF REALISM AND FORM 6. Memory, Interiority and Historicity: Some Factors in the Early Novel; Patrick Parrinder 7. A Gothic History of the British Novel; Nancy Armstrong 8. Critical Histories of Omniscience; Rachel Sagner Buurma 9. The 'power of the written word': Literary Impressionism, Politics and Anxiety; Max Saunders 10. Virginia Woolf and Metonymic Realism: Making It New?; Pam Morris PART III: THE NOVEL IN NATIONAL AND TRANSNATIONAL CULTURES 11. Defining an 'Age of the Novel' in the United States; Jonathan Arac 12. Between Modernism and the Postcolonial: Reading Patrick White and Malcolm Lowry in the 1970s; Mark Williams 13. Transporting Fiction: The Novel in a (Post)Colonial World; Simon Gikandi PART IV: THE NOVEL NOW 14. Art Unseduced by Its Own Beauty: Toni Morrison and the Humility of Experiment; David James 15. The Dynamics of Residual and Emergent in the American Novel after 1940; Cyrus R. K. Patell and Deborah Lindsay Williams