List of illustrations; List of contributors; Preface; Part I. Contexts and Modes: 1. Readers, writers, critics, and the professionalization of literature Barbara M. Benedict; 2. Criticism, taste, aesthetics Simon Jarvis; 3. Literature and politics Michael Scrivener; 4. Literature, national identity, and empire Saree Makdisi; 5. Sensibility Susan Manning; 6. Theatrical culture Gillian Russell; 7. Gothic James Watt; Part II. Writers, Circles, Traditions: 8. Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Sarah Fielding Peter Sabor; 9. Johnson, Boswell, and their circle Murray Pittock; 10. Sterne and Romantic autobiography Thomas Keymer; 11. Blake and the poetics of enthusiasm Jon Mee; 12. 'Unsex'd Females': Barbauld, Robinson, and Smith Judith Pascoe; 13. The Lake school: Wordsworth and Coleridge Paul Magnuson; 14. Jane Austen and the invention of the serious modern novel Kathryn Sutherland; 15. Keats, Shelley, Byron, and the Hunt circle Greg Kucich; 16. John Clare and the traditions of labouring-class verse John Goodridge and Bridget Keegan.