British law and literature in the long eighteenth century / edited by Melissa J. Ganz, Marquette Univesity.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Ganz, Melissa J., 1972- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Law.

Law and literature--Great Britain--History--18th century.

Law and literature.

Law in literature--History--18th century.

Law in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 273 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Summary:

The law underwent significant changes in eighteenth-century Britain as jurists and legislators adapted doctrines to fit the needs of an increasingly commercial, industrial, and imperial society. This volume reveals how legal developments of the period shaped and were shaped by imaginative writing. Reading canonical and lesserknown texts from the Restoration to the Romantic era, the chapters explore literary engagements with libel law, plague law, marriage law, naturalization law, the poor laws, the law of slavery and abolition, and the practice of common-law decision-making. The volume also considers the language and form of legal treatises and judicial decisions, as well as recent appropriations of the period's literature and legal norms by the Christian right. Through these varied case studies, the volume deepens our knowledge of law and literature's mutual entanglements in the long eighteenth century while shedding light on legal and ethical questions that remain of concern to this day.

Contents:

"Every Common Reader" : Satire, Libel Law, and the Emergence of Objective Interpretive Procedures, ca. 1670-1730 / Andrew Benjamin Bricker

Perpendicular Publics : Contesting Infrastructure at Early Eighteenth Century Rail Crossings / David Alff

Ambivalence, Survival, and Law in Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year / Kathryn D. Temple

The Court of Justice and the Court of Conscience : Legal Ethics in Tom Jones / Suzanna Geiser

"A Higher Tribunal" : Equity, Law, and the Family in Sir Charles Grandison / Melissa J. Ganz

Mansfield, Burrow, and the Reformulation of the Legal Decision / Simon Stern

Novel Subjects : Naturalization in Richardson and Edgeworth / Stephanie DeGooyer

Common Law and Cultural Difference in Scott's Ivanhoe and Chronicles of the Canongate / Anne Frey

The Legal Character of Paupers in Early Nineteenth-Century England / Mark Schoenfield

Liberty in "Parenthesis" : The Case of The Slave, Grace (1827) and Antislavery Satire in The History of Mary Prince (1831) / Sarah Winter

Yearning for Restriction in the Romantic Novel : Propagating Conservative Legal Norms in Right-Wing Literary Podcasts and Religion Centered Editions of Works by Jane Austen and Mary Shelley / Nicole Mansfield Wright.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 22 Sep 2025).

ISBN:

1-009-22416-6

1-009-22418-2

OCLC:

1540343827