Overview

The law underwent significant changes in eighteenth-century Britain as jurists and legislators adapted doctrines to fit the needs of an increasingly commercial, industrial, and imperial society. This volume reveals how legal developments of the period shaped and were shaped by imaginative writing. Reading canonical and lesserknown texts from the Restoration to the Romantic era, the chapters explore literary engagements with libel law, plague law, marriage law, naturalization law, the poor laws, the law of slavery and abolition, and the practice of common-law decision-making. The volume also considers the language and form of legal treatises and judicial decisions, as well as recent appropriations of the period's literature and legal norms by the Christian right. Through these varied case studies, the volume deepens our knowledge of law and literature's mutual entanglements in the long eighteenth century while shedding light on legal and ethical questions that remain of concern to this day.

Full Product Details

9781009224130

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Reviews

'A fascinating collection of essays on the relation of law, history, and literature during the 'long' eighteenth-century, taking the reader from the days of Defoe to the dawning of the Victorians. A welcome contribution to the field of literary jurisprudence.' Ian Ward, Professor of Law, Newcastle University 'This impressive and authoritative collection of essays pushes beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries of law and literature. These essays establish the cultural significance of law and literature's mutual entanglements in the long eighteenth century, and their continuing relevance to contemporary legal, political, and cultural debates. Provocative and timely.' Susan Sage Heinzelman, Associate Professor Emerita of English and Gender Studies

'A fascinating collection of essays on the relation of law, history, and literature during the 'long' eighteenth-century, taking the reader from the days of Defoe to the dawning of the Victorians. A welcome contribution to the field of literary jurisprudence.' Ian Ward, Professor of Law, Newcastle University 'This impressive and authoritative collection of essays pushes beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries of law and literature. These essays establish the cultural significance of law and literature's mutual entanglements in the long eighteenth century, and their continuing relevance to contemporary legal, political, and cultural debates. Provocative and timely.' Susan Sage Heinzelman, Associate Professor Emerita of English and Gender Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Author Information

Melissa J. Ganz is Associate Professor of English at Marquette University. She is the author of Public Vows: Fictions of Marriage in the English Enlightenment (2019), winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize. Her essays on legal and ethical dimensions of British fiction have appeared in journals including Eighteenth-Century Studies, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Review of English Studies, and ELH, as well as in several edited collections. She holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a PhD in English literature from Yale University.

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