The Minerva Press under William Lane - Women Authors and Novel Genres, 1782-1802

During the Minerva Press's heyday, founder William Lane published in an extraordinary range of genres. Following the original organizational taxonomy that Lane used in his own promotional materials, Eve Tavor Bannet here explores each: Historical fiction, Terror and Mystery Fiction ('Gothic'), Fairy Tales, Tales of the Times, National Tales, Wanderers Tales, Novels of Education, Female Biography and Marital Domestic Fiction. In providing the first modern analysis of the majority of texts that Lane published, she reveals how the Minerva Press bridged the gap between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction and sheds light on how contemporary methods of imitative writing produced its characteristically fluid, hybrid and modular fictions. These characteristics, she demonstrates, enabled its women authors to converse with one another, intervening in key contemporary political, cultural and domestic debates and earned many well-deserved popularity and praise from those judging by the pre-Romantic methods of evaluation in use.

About the author

Eve Tavor Bannet is George Lynn Cross Professor Emeritus, University of Oklahoma. Her monographs include Empire of Letters (2005), Eighteenth-Century Manners of Reading (2017), Transatlantic Stories and the History of Reading, 1720–1810 (2011) and The Letters in the Story (2021). Her work focuses on eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century letters, print culture, women writers and transatlantic exchanges.

Product details

• Authors: Eve Tavor Bannet
• Publisher: Cambridge Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 30.06.2026
• EAN: 9781009728355
• ISBN: 978-1-009-72835-5
• Illustrations: Worked examples or Exercises
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; London, Greater London, Fiction: special features, Feminism & feminist theory, Romanticism, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Feminism and feminist theory, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Early 19th century c 1800 to c 1850, Publishing industry & book trade, Later 18th century c 1750 to c 1799, Publishing and book trade, FICTION: Gothic