Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: Gender and Genre
1: The Rise of the Novel: Gender and Genre in Theories of Prose Fiction
2: Observing the Forms: Amatory Fiction and the Construction of a Female Reader
Part II: Women Writers
3: `A Devil on't, the Woman Damns the Poet': Aphra Behn's Fictions of Feminine Identity
4: `A Genius for Love': Sex as Politics in Delarivier Manley's Scandal Fiction
5: `Preparatives to Love': Fiction as Seduction in Eliza Haywood's Amatory Prose
Conclusion: The Decline of Amatory Fiction: Re(de)fining the Female Form
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

an extraordinary rich and interesting book...the range of sources is extensive, the readings provocative, and the grasp of the relation between text and culture both assured and suggestive. And, again characteristically, the subtlety of the feminist theory she deploys allows a persuasive new reading of the problematic 'rise of the novel'. Review of English Studies