Proposing that Samuel Richardson's novels were crucial for the construction of female individuality in the mid-eighteenth century, Bonnie Latimer shows that Richardson's heroines are uniquely conceived as individuals who embody the agency and self-determination implied by that term. In addition to placing Richardson within the context of his own culture, recouping for contemporary readers the influence of Grandison on later writers, including Maria Edgeworth, Sarah Scott, and Mary Wollstonecraft, is central to her study. Latimer argues that Grandison has been unfairly marginalised in favor of Clarissa and Pamela, and suggests that a rigorous rereading of the novel not only provides a basis for reassessing significant aspects of Richardson's fictional oeuvre, but also has implications for fresh thinking about the eighteenth-century novel. Latimer's study is not a specialist study of Grandison but rather a reconsideration of Richardson's novelistic canon that places Grandison at its centre as Richardson's final word on his re-envisioning of the gendered self.

With this well-illustrated new volume, the SECC continues its tradition of publishing innovative interdisciplinary scholarship on the interpretive edge. Essays include: Misty Anderson, Our Purpose is the Same: Whitefield, Foote, and the Theatricality of Methodism Tili Boon Cuillé, La Vraisemblance du merveilleux: Operatic Aesthetics in Cazotte's Fantastic Fiction Simon Dickie, Joseph Andrews and the Great Laughter Debate: The Roasting of Adams Lynn Festa, Cosmetic Differences: The Changing Faces of England and France Blake Gerard, All that the heart wishes: Changing Views toward Sentimentality Reflected in Visualizations of Sterne's Maria, 1773-1888 Jennifer Keith, The Sins of Sensibility and the Challenge of Antislavery Poetry Mary Helen McMurran, Aphra Behn from Both Sides: Translation in the Atlantic World Leslie Richardson, Leaving her Father's House: Locke, Astell, and Clarissa's Body Politic Sandra Sherman, The Wealth of Nations in the 1790s Alan Sikes, Snip Snip Here, Snip Snip There, and a Couple of Tra La Las: The Rise and Fall of the Castrato Singer Rivka Swenson, Representing Modernity in Jane Barker's Galesia Trilogy: Jacobite Allegory and the Aesthetics of the Patch-Work Subject

Beginning with a general discussion of patriarchy as the starting point of feminist utopian literature, Qian Ma's study focuses on a cross-cultural comparison of feminist utopian discourse in six 18th-century Chinese and English fictional narratives: Charlotte Lennox's Female Quixote, Sarah Scott's A Description of Millennium Hall, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Chen Duansheng's Destiny after Rebirth, Cao Xueqin's A Dream of the Red Mansion and Li Ruzhen's Destiny of Flowers in the Mirror. and the patriarchal realistic world within fictional narratives, and the contrast between fictional ideality and social realities in China and England during the 18th century. feminist writers to express social criticism obliquely in the form of utopias, the writers discussed in this study were true forerunners of contemporary feminism, and their works anticipated today's feminist concerns.

'This is an astonishingly rich and fascinating book, which engages with French feminist theory as well as with Islam, Hinduism and Judaism, as it revisits traditional Catholic themes: a book destined, I am sure, to renew and deepen reflection on the doctrine of God as Trinity.' Fergus Kerr, OP, Blackfriars, Oxford 'Gavin D'Costa is already well known for his questioning and sensitive theology of religions. In this book, he brings the same openness and sensitiity to a profound consideration of the Christian Trinity and its gendered representations in human culture. Through a series of lively and challenging engagements with the work of Luce Irigaray, Salman Rushdie and the Indian artist Jyoti Sahi, D' Costa develops a searching argument for why God is beyond gender and yet necessarily synbolized in both male and female terms. At once both deeply critical of his own Roman Catholic tradition, and yet passionate in defence of its possiblities, D' Costa argues for an understaning of the Church as 'completing' God's incarnation - in which all follow Mary as 'co-redeemers' with Christ - as a Marian and multi-gendered community. Confronting the complacency of both conservative and radical, this book is a brilliant example of the new 'theology of culture' that treats Christian tradition and contemporary concerns with equal seriousness.' Gerard Loughlin, University of Durham Gavin D'Costa is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol.

Traces a shift in the very definition of literature, from one that encompasses the material conditions of the production and distribution of books to the more familiar emphasis on the solitary author's ownership of an abstract text. Drawing on contemporary accounts of printers, booksellers, publishers, and distributors, the author examines attitudes about the creative process and approaches to the commodification of writing.