The Historical Novel in the Circulating Library

In the last chapter I traced the beginnings of a generic cycle of historical fiction from Leland’s and Walpole’s experiments with reviving the medieval romance form in the 1760s to Reeve’s, Hutchinson’s, and Lee’s attempts over the next two decades to replicate the successes of these novels. But five novels do not a genre make. Genrification can only be said to have occurred when a set of conventions becomes repeated and repeatable. In the case of the historical novel, this occurs by the late 1780s, as the chronological listing of historical fiction in Table 1.1 illustrates. According to Altman’s model of generic formation, genres take shape through a process of imitation and experimentation. After a notable and unique success, producers try to reproduce that success by repeating features of the work. At first different producers will pick out different features to duplicate — settings, actors, plot structures, and so forth — until in some instances these experiments in imitation coalesce into a repeatable formula or generic cycle.