I am fascinated by the 18thC. It was bawdy, raucous and rough – the age of Hogarth and Fielding. Yet it was also the Age of Enlightenment, when ‘Reason’ and ‘Civilisation’ became all important. And it was the century that saw the start of the English novel. (The image above is from Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe which is often credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre.)
Those who enjoyed my recent course at the Art Gallery of NSW on ‘The First Best-Sellers’ might like a reading list – of books I recommended during the course, but also other books about the era, its novelists and the early attempts to write a novel.
I’d love to hear your opinions on 18thC writers and early novels. Do you find it as fascinating as I do? Which of these books have you read, or can you recommend any others? Tell me by leaving a comment.
Happy reading!
Novels
Catharine and Other Writings (the juvenilia) by Jane Austen
Evelina by Fanny Burney
Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Castle Rackrent and The Absentee by Maria Edgeworth
History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
The Adventures of David Simple by Sarah Fielding
The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith
The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox
The Monk by Matthew Lewis
The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded By Samuel Richardson
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Biographies
Samuel Johnson: A Biography by Peter Martin
Fanny Burney: A Biography by Claire Harman
Dr Johnson’s Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World by Henry Hitchings
Laurence Sterne: A Life by Ian Campbell Ross
Boswell’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr Johnson by Adam Sisman
Daniel Defoe: The Life and Surprising Adventures by Richard West
Other Reading
Liber Amoris by William Hazlitt
The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack & the Extraordinary Story of Harris’s List by Hallie Rubenhold
Mothers of the Novel by Dale Spender
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
I only recommend books I have read and know. Some of these links are my affiliate links. If you buy a book by clicking on one of these links I receive a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but does help cover the cost of producing my free newsletter.
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Margaret Debenham
Oh dear, I’m afraid my score would bring the comment “Could do better”. Of those novels on your list, I have read Jane Austen’s Juvenilia (wickedly hilarious), Tom Jones (and Joseph Andrews), The Vicar of Wakefield, Humphrey Clinker (and Peregrine Pickle), Tristram Shandy and Gulliver’s Travels. I haven’t read Evelina, but have read Burney’s Cecilia. My reading of Defoe has been limited to Moll Flanders (I haven’t seen the movie) and The Journal of the Plague Year. Biographies – I have read Peter Martin’s biography of Boswell, but not of Johnson (the Johnson biography I have – by Walter Jackson Bate – dates from 1978, so an update is obviously required; and I have of course read Boswell’s biography, no update needed there). None of the others. Of the Other Reading, only Mary Wollstonecraft. So I must indeed try to “do better”, with your list as a guide. And then there are the Claire Tomalin biographies you have listed elsewhere…..Too many books, too little time!
Susannah Fullerton
Margaret, I think you are being too hard on yourself. It seems to me you have done far more 18thC reading than most people have managed. Do read the Peter Martin biography of Johnson.
I do agree about too many books and not enough time!!!