The Novel: Vacation Reading List Professor Lindsay Smith

L.J.Smith@sussex.ac.uk

The primary texts we will be considering on The Novel next semester are listed below in the
order in which we will be studying them. You will note that particular editions are specified; please
do your best to get hold of these editions as they contain notes, appendices and other scholarly
apparatus that will help you considerably. If you are struggling to find the edition listed below, please
go for an equivalent scholarly edition.

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, ed., Thomas Keymer (Oxford: Worlds Classics, 2007).
Fanny Burney, Evelina, eds. V. Jones and F.A. Bloom (Oxford: Worlds Classics, 2008).
Jane Austen, Persuasion, eds. J. Kinsley and D. Lynch (Oxford: Worlds Classics, 2008).
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, ed. M. Cardwell & K. Flint (Oxford: Worlds Classics,
1994).
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, trans. G. Wall (London: Penguin, 2003).
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, ed. R. Luckhurst (Oxford: Worlds Classics, 2009).
George Gissing, New Grub Street, ed. J. Goode (Oxford: Worlds Classics, 2008).
Jean Rhys, Good Morning Midnight (London: Penguin, 2000).
A post-1945 novel selected by your seminar tutor. The choice of novel will vary according to the
seminar group you are in. Your tutor will agree a particular novel with your group in week 1.

Please do your best to get ahead with reading these texts over the vacation since during term,
in addition to these novels, you will be asked to read core items of secondary reading each week. In
preparation for the module, you may also like to take a look at some of the following items of general
secondary reading. These will help you with the historical developments of the novel that the module
will chart.

John Richetti, The English Novel in History, 1700-1780 (London: Routledge, 1999).
Elizabeth Ermath, The English Novel in History, 1840-1895 (London: Routledge, 1997).
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding (London: Chatto,
1957).
Nancy Armstrong, Desire & Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel (Oxford: OUP,
1990).
John Mullan, How Novels Work (Oxford: OUP, 2008).
Michael McKeon (ed.), Theory of The Novel: A Historical Approach (London: John Hopkins
University Press, 2000).

Happy reading! Have a good Christmas and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

Lindsay