Minervas Gothics

Book excerpt: This project has several distinctive features. The first is statistical analysis of publishing records for all British novels (Minerva and otherwise) published between 1780 and 1829 (data are compiled from James Raven’s and Peter Garside’s The English Novel, 1770-1829: a Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles). This analysis confirms that Minerva novelists are more prolific than most female novelists in the period. It is rarely noted that Minerva novelists also often publish on occasion with other presses, something to which the data calls attention. The book’s scope and content challenges an anachronism that still permeates studies of the Romantic era. Minerva’s Gothics restores a forgotten pathway between first-generation Romantic reactions to popular print culture and Percy Shelley’s influential conceptualization of the poet.