Minerva’s Gothics : The Politics and Poetics of Romantic Exchange, 1780-1820

Between 1790 and 1820, William Lane's Minerva Press published an unprecedented number of circulating-library novels by obscure female authors. Because these novels catered to the day's fashion for sentimental themes and Gothic romance, they were and continue to be generally dismissed as ephemera. Recently, however, scholars interested in historicizing Romantic conceptions of genius and authorship have begun to write Minerva back into literary history. By making Minerva novels themselves the centre of the analysis, Minerva's Gothics illustrates how Romantic 'anxiety' is better conceptualized as a mutual though not entirely equitable 'exchange', a dynamic interrelationship between Minerva novels and Romantic-era politics and poetics that started in 1780, when Lane began publishing novels with some regularity. Reading Minerva novels for their shared popular conventions demonstrates that circulating-library novelists collectively recirculate, engage and modify commonplaces about women's nature, the social order and, most importantly, the very Romantic redefinitions of authorship and literature that render their novels not worth reading. By recognizing Minerva's collaborative rather than merely derivative authorial model, a forgotten pathway is restored between first-generation Romantic reactions to popular print culture and Percy Shelley's influential conceptualization of the poet in A Defence of Poetry . Between 1790 and 1820, William Lane's Minerva Press published an unprecedented number of new novels by female authors. Reading these novels for their shared popular conventions demonstrates that circulating-library novelists collectively recirculate, engage and modify commonplaces about women's nature, the social order and, most importantly, the very same Romantic redefinitions of literature that still render their novels not worth reading. Elizabeth Neiman's analysis shows that Minerva novelists write and authorize a collaborative authorial model, and that this model reverberates in Romantic poetics--most notably, Percy Shelley's portrayal of the idealized poet in A Defence of Poetry The infamously popular London publisher William Lane made a name for himself and his Press, 'Minerva', by courting debuting female authors and selling their novels wholesale as circulating-library collections. Minerva's Gothics puts Minerva novels back into conversation with each other and with the day's influential literary and philosophical texts