Routledge - Romance for Sale in Early Modern England Book

Explore the origins of the modern novel with Romance for Sale in Early Modern England: The Rise of Prose Fiction. Published by Routledge, this study examines how early modern English prose fiction created a new literary culture. It investigates the shift toward professional writers producing books specifically for a market of anonymous readers. Steve Mentz provides a deep look into the narrative innovations of this period. The book argues that these changes did not just come from the rise of the print market, but also from the rediscovery of Heliodorus's Aethiopian History, a classical text from North Africa. This work offers a comprehensive historicist and formalist account of how the foundations of prose fiction were built during this transformative era.