Ian Watt

Preface In 1938 I began a study of the relation between the growth of the reading public and the emergence of the novel in eighteenth-century England; and in 1947 it eventually took shape as a Fellowship Dissertation for St John's College, Cambridge. Two wider problems, however, remained...

PREFACE IN 1938 I began a study of the relation between the growth of the reading public and the emergence of the novel in eighteenth-century England; and in 1947 it eventually took shape as a Fellowship Dissertation for St. John's College, Cambridge. Two wider problems, however, remained...

GENERAL INTRODUCTION I I The publication of this New Pelican Guide to English Literature in many volumes might seem an odd phenomenon at a time when, in the words of the novelist L. H. Myers, a 'deep-seated spiritual vulgarity lies at the heart of our civilization', a time more typically...