Enriching and complicating the history of fiction between Richardson and Fielding at mid-century and Austen at the turn of the century, this collection focuses on it-narratives, a once popular form largely forgotten by readers and critics alike, and advances important work on consumer culture and the theory of things.
The essays in The Secret Life of Things approach it-narratives, a once popular form largely forgotten by readers and critics alike, from various theoretical and historical vantage points. While sketching the cultural biography of a neglected literary form, these wide-ranging essays both enrich and complicate the history of prose fiction in the second half of the eighteenth century.
