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Synopsis

What did people read before there were novels? Not necessarily just other |literary| works, according to this fascinating study of the beginnings of the English novel. To understand the origins of the novel as a species and to read individual novels well, we must know several pasts and traditions--even non-fictional and non-narrative traditions, even non-|artistic| and non-written pasts--that at first might seem far removed from the pleasures readers find in modern novels.