Secret Life of Things

MARK BLACKWELL is a professor of English at the University of Hartford in Connecticut. He is the editor of British It-Narratives, 1750-1830 and his work has appeared in ECTI, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Eighteenth-Century Life, The Cambridge History of the English Novel, and The Blackwell Companion to the English Novel.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The It-Narrative and Eighteenth-Century Thing TheoryMark BlackwellPart I: The Stories Things TellThe Spirit of ThingsBarbara M. BenedictThe Rape of the Lock as Still LifeJonathan LambPersonal Effects and Sentimental FictionsDeidre LynchSuffering Things: Lapdogs, Slaves, and Counter-SensibilityMarkman EllisPartII:ApproachingIt-NarrativesIt-Narrators and Circulation: Defining a SubgenreLiz BellamyBritannia’s Rule and the It-NarratorAileen DouglasSpeaking Objects: The Circulation of Stories in Eighteenth-Century Prose FictionChristopher FlintHackwork: It-Narratives and IterationMark BlackwellOccupying Works: Animated Objects and Literary PropertyHilary Jane EnglertCirculating Anti-Semitism: Charles Johnstone’s ChrysalAnn Louise KibbieCorkscrews and Courtesans: Sex and Death in Circulation NovelsBonnie BlackwellIt-Narratives: Fictional Point of View and Constructing the Middle ClassNicholas HudsonPart III: It-Narratives in TransitionThe Moral Ends of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Object NarrativesLynn FestaDiscreet Jewels: Victorian Diamond Narratives and the Problem of Sentimental ValueJohn PlotzContributorsIndex

"The Secret Life of Things serves to encapsulate the most important work done recently on eighteenth-century it-narratives, while advancing the field significantly. It is likely to remain the definitive treatment of the eighteenth-century it-narrative for years to come, while also being of permanent interest to students of the history of the novel." - Adam Potkay (author of Hope: A Literary History) “Mark Blackwell has assembled a group of lively, provocative, and readable essays. We are lucky to have them. . . . The Secret Life of Things is an erudite and enjoyable guide, well-written and wide-ranging.”(Review of English Studies) “Blackwell’s collection marks the arrival of a substantial new body of work. Admirably inclusive . . . The Secret Life of Things will be useful for anyone who is working on objects in eighteenth-century narrative.” (TLS) “Blackwell’s collection brings together some of the best previously published essays on eighteenth-century thinginess, such as Aileen Douglas’s essay on it-narratives and empire (1993), and important new work by Barbara Benedict, Jonathan Lamb, Deidre Lynch, Markman Ellis, Lynn Festa, and Blackwell himself, among others . . . [This] is a valuable collection for eighteenth-century studies and for ‘thing-theory’ more generally.” (Modern Philology) “I think (this volume) represents essentially the best-case scenario for the edited collection of literary criticism that is organized not for a series or as primarily a teaching tool but as the best way of compiling a field’s state of knowledge on an emerging topic . . . (it) remains an indispensable resource for scholars working on a host of topics related to the it-narrative and the animated objects of eighteenth-century literature.” (SEL) “Complex and sophisticated. . . . Blackwell’s volume both carefully scrutinizes it-narratives and provides interesting perspectives on them.” (Style) “The collection . . . adroitly consolidates, assesses, and extends the best work available in this fruitful intersection of theory and culture. The book boasts some of the most distinguished scholarly critics of the 18th-century operating in the field today, and one finds herein numerous instances of scintillating and luminous critical prose. . . . Recommended.” (CHOICE) “The Secret Life of Things fully realizes the ambitions that Mark Blackwell established for the volume-both to leaven the history of prose fiction and to contribute to our understanding of eighteenth-century attitudes towards the new object world -ambitions that square with those of the Bucknell series in which it appears, devoted to eighteenth-century literature and culture.” (ECF) “By bringing our attention to a genre that realizes the apparently impossible condition of material objects behaving as narrative protagonists, Blackwell's collection destabilizes our received impressions of eighteenth-century narrative as an evolving institution of realism . . . [I]ntriguing analyses and claims fill The Secret Life of Things.” (Eighteenth-Century Life)