1700 to Fielding. These two new volumes aim to present the reader with a firm sense of the state of transatlantic criticism on the eighteenth-century novel, and the developments in critical trends that have occured since the 1970s. Lengthy introductions seek to frame the collections in such a way as to provide a means of understanding the individual essays that follow, to introduce the reader to the most important arenas of scholarship and debate, and to comment on some of the most significant contributions to various seminal issues. These include the origins of the English novel the role of female writers throughout