Novels

In The Rise of the Novel (Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Hogarth, London, [1957] 1987), Ian Watt contends that although more eighteenth-century novels were written by women than by men, women’s dominance was only numerical rather than qualitative. In relation to the Romantic-period novel, both aspects of his statement have been interrogated. The digital approach to the humanities has led to a more complex picture in relation to quantity, while the importance of the female-authored Romantic novel both to Romanticism and within the history of the novel has been reassessed. Writing across a range of genres, the women novelists of this period sometimes preempted and often shaped and critiqued the aesthetic categories identified with Romanticism. As a result of their contribution, the novel in the Romantic period is an innovative, experimental, and diverse form.