Progress of Romance, Through Times, Countries, and Manners, The by Clara Reeve

Clara Reeve (1729–1807)’s The Progress of Romance, Through Times, Countries, and Manners (1785) is a two-volume publication, written in the dialogue form. It is a significant contribution to the rich tradition of British genre theory and to the tradition of female literary history initiated by Elizabeth Singer Rowe (née Singer) and Susan Dobson (née Dawson) earlier in the eighteenth century (Omdal, Lit Compass 10(9):688–695, 2013). Reeve’s definition of the romance influenced later writers such as Sir Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Joseph Conrad (Regis, A natural history of the romance novel. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2003, 21). The point of departure in The Progress of Romance is to initiate a reevaluation of the romance tradition, which had been underestimated and partly ignored by learned English gentlemen (Reeve, The Progress of Romance and the History of Charoba, Queen of Aegypt. 2 Vols. Reproduced from the Colchester Edition. The Facsimile Text Society, New York, [1785] 1930, 1:xi). Via the participants in this staged dialogue—the eloquent protagonist Euphrasia, the antagonist Hortensius (who shares names with a famous ancient Roman orator and represents the ideal of the English gentleman), and the “judge” Sophronia (who represents female wisdom)—Reeve dives into the history and poetics of the romance, from Greek Antiquity up to the late eighteenth century. The Progress of Romance is among very few literary critical contributions written in the dialogue form by a woman in the eighteenth century.