"Brown presents his theory of the novel as institutionalized and institutionalizer in a manner often as engaging as that of his privileged authors. The result is a book that takes an erudite and elelgant next step in the debate over the origins of the novel."--Nancy Armstrong, Brown University "Must-read meditations on the mystical protocols and a priori assumptions of novel studies."--Deirdre Lynch, Novel In Institutions of the English Novel, Homer Obed Brown takes issue with the generally accepted origin of the novel in the early eighteenth century. Brown argues that what we now call the novel did not appear as a recognized single "genre" until the early nineteenth century, when the fictional prose narratives of the preceding century were grouped together under that name. After analyzing the figurative and thematic uses of private letters and social gossip in the constitution of the novel, Brown explores what was instituted in and by the fictions of Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, and...