Romantic Novel

Showing 25–48 of 52 results

  • Emma

    Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) tells the story of the coming of age of Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever, and rich,” who “had lived nearly twenty-one years…

  • The Monk

    The Monk is the most sensational of Gothic novels. The main plot concerns Ambrosio, an abbot of irreproachable holiness, who is seduced by a woman…

  • Emmeline

    The plot of Charlotte Smith’s autobiographical first novel Emmeline (1788) includes the usual thrills of the eighteenth-century courtship novel: abduction, duels, and a “fairy tale…

  • Walsingham

    Walsingham is both a lively story and a commentary by Mary Robinson on her society’s constraints upon women. The novel follows the lives of two…

  • A Letter to the Women of England and The Natural Daughter

    Mary Robinson’s A Letter to the Women of England (1799) is a radical response to the rampant anti-feminist sentiment of the late 1790s. In this…

  • The Father and Daughter with Dangers of Coquetry

    The Father and Daughter was one of the most widely read novels of the early nineteenth century, captivating readers with its pathos and melodrama. It…

  • The Old Manor House

    In The Old Manor House (1794), Charlotte Smith combines elements of the romance, the Gothic, recent history, and culture to produce both a social document…

  • Northanger Abbey – Second Edition

    First accepted by a publisher in 1803, Northanger Abbey was eventually published posthumously in 1818. In it Austen weaves a romance full of suspense and…

  • Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne

    In 1810, while still at Eton, Percy Bysshe Shelley published Zastrozzi, the first of his two early Gothic prose romances. He published the second, St.…

  • Hermsprong

    Robert Bage’s Hermsprong satirizes English society of the 1790s targeting, in particular, corrupt clergymen, grasping lawyers and wicked aristocrats. The protagonist, a European raised among…

  • The Missionary

    Set in seventeenth-century India, The Missionary focuses on the relationship between Hilarion, a Portuguese missionary to India, and Luxima, an Indian prophetess. Both are aristocratic,…

  • Desmond

    Desmond is a political novel about the French Revolution. It is Charlotte Smith’s only epistolary work, and it is her most politically radical piece. Written…

  • Vathek with The Episodes of Vathek

    William Beckford’s Vathek is a touchstone of eighteenth-century Orientalism and of the Gothic novel. Beckford’s later work, The Episodes of Vathek, shares Vathek’s irreverent and…

  • The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

    Set in early eighteenth-century Scotland, James Hogg’s masterpiece is a brilliant psychological study of religious fanaticism and the power of evil. Led on by his…

  • Mansfield Park

    Mansfield Park is Jane Austen’s darkest, and most complex novel. In contrast to the confident and vivacious heroines of Emma and Pride and Prejudice, its…

  • Sense and Sensibility

    Jane Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, is a witty satire of the sentimental novel, a popular genre in Britain throughout the 1790s and…

  • Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

    William Godwin’s memoir of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, marks a transition in Godwin’s philosophical development from extreme rationalism to the recognition of the moral importance…

  • Fleetwood

    Fleetwood is a pivotal novel of early English Romanticism and a powerful critique of the Romantic emotionalism being spread across Europe in Rousseau’s name. Godwin’s…

  • Caleb Williams

    William Godwin was one of the most popular novelists of the Romantic era; P.B. Shelley praised him, Byron drew heavily on his narrative style, and…

  • Memoirs of Modern Philosophers

    When the Anti-Jacobin Review described Memoirs of Modern Philosophers in 1800 as “the first novel of the day” and as proof that “all the female…

  • Memoirs of Emma Courtney

    In November of 1795, after William Godwin requested a sketch of Mary Hays’ life, she arrived at the idea of Memoirs of Emma Courtney. Godwin…

  • Secresy – Second Edition

    Secresy was Eliza Fenwick’s only work for adults—a fact that may help to explain why this extraordinary novel has been so thoroughly overlooked. On one…

  • The Victim of Prejudice – Second Edition

    Mary Hays was an outspoken Radical intellectual in the turbulent decade of the 1790’s. She argued vehemently for the need to recognise the moral and…

  • Valperga

    Originally published in 1823, Valperga is probably Mary Shelley’s most neglected novel. Set in 14th-century Italy, it represents a merging of historical romance and the…