The Secret History in Literature, 1660–1820

Rebecca Bullard, Rachel Carnell

Cambridge University Press, Mar 24, 2017 - Literary Criticism

Secret history, with its claim to expose secrets of state and the sexual intrigues of monarchs and ministers, alarmed and thrilled readers across Europe and America from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Scholars have recognised for some time the important position that the genre occupies within the literary and political culture of the Enlightenment. Of interest to students of British, French and American literature, as well as political and intellectual history, this new volume of essays demonstrates for the first time the extent of secret history's interaction with different literary traditions, including epic poetry, Restoration drama, periodicals, and slave narratives. It reveals secret history's impact on authors, readers, and the book trade in England, France, and America throughout the long eighteenth century. In doing so, it offers a case study for approaching questions of genre at moments when political and cultural shifts put strain on traditional generic categories.

About the author

Rebecca Bullard is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Reading. She is the author of The Politics of Disclosure, 1674–1725: Secret History Narratives (2009) and editor of The Fair Penitent and The Ambitious Step-Mother for The Plays and Poems of Nicholas Rowe, Volume 1 (2016).

Rachel Carnell is a Professor of English at Cleveland State University, Ohio. Professor Carnell is the author of Partisan Politics, Narrative Realism and the Rise of the British Novel (2006), A Political Biography of Delarivier Manley (2008), and co-editor of the five-volume Selected Works of Delarivier Manley (with Ruth Herman, 2005). She has also had several research articles published on subjects such as secret history, Aphra Behn, Samuel Richardson and Eliza Haywood.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Secret History in Literature, 1660–1820
• Editors: Rebecca Bullard, Rachel Carnell
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2017
• ISBN: 1108210996, 9781108210997
• Subjects: History / Social History; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / Renaissance