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Birth of the British Novel

Henry Hitchings

Jonty Claypole

Emma Webster

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

07/02/2011

BBC Four - Birth of the British Novel

How 18th-century novelists such as Defoe and Swift established all our literary genres.

Henry Hitchings explores the lives and works of the radical 18th-century British novelists such as Defoe, Swift and Fielding who established the literary genres we recognise today.

Author Henry Hitchings explores the lives and works of Britain's radical and pioneering 18th-century novelists who, in just 80 years, established all the literary genres we recognise today. It was a golden age of creativity led by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney and William Godwin, amongst others. Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy are novels that still sparkle with audacity and innovation.
 
On his journey through 18th-century fiction, Hitchings reveals how the novel was more than mere entertainment, it was also a subversive hand grenade that would change British society for the better. He travels from the homes of Britain's great and good to its lowliest prisons, meeting contemporary writers like Martin Amis, Will Self, Tom McCarthy and Jenny Uglow on the way. 

Although 18th-century novels are woefully neglected today compared to those of the following two centuries, Hitchings shows how the best of them can offer as much pleasure to the reader as any modern classic.

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Simulcast of network BBC One in high definition. From 03/11/2010

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