Whist the adjective “Georgian” may be applied to architecture and furniture, in literary history the period is not at all unified. Usually it is held to divide into neo-classicism (roughly 1714-1750), sentimentalism (roughly 1750-1780), and romanticism (1780-1820). Such a schema, however, offers only a procrustean framework for thinking about the actual similarities and differences of a period which also sees the rise of the novel. “Georgian” is not therefore applied to literature of the eigheenth century, the term “Georgian poetry” referring to verse published during the reign of George V (1910-36).
Austen Texts
Love and Friendship 1790
The Watsons fragment 1793-5
Lady Susan 1794
Northanger Abbey 1798
Pride and Prejudice 1813
Mansfield Park 1814
Emma 1816
Sanditon fragment 1817
Neo-Classicism
Henry Fielding
Amelia
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
Sentimentalists
Oliver Goldsmith
The Vicar of Wakefield
Romantics
Mary Shelley
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus
The Last Man
The Gothic
Horace Walpole
The Castle of Otranto
John Polidori
The Vampyre 1819
- The Northanger Canon
- The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe 1794
- The Italian by Ann Radcliffe 1796
- The Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons 1793
- The Mysterious Warning, A German Tale by Eliza Parsons 1796
… page incomplete 11 July 08
