Reviews

"The last two decades have been turbulent ones for the study of the novel, and most of the waves have been created by Michael McKeon... The fifteenth anniversary edition... offers the opportunity to reflect on McKeon's extraordinary contribution to studies of the novel... Because the work is so careful and the thinking so precise, I find the story he tells just as compelling now as in the 1980s and, if anything, more satisfying in its comprehension of issues and weaving them into a coherent whole."

"This book is a formidable attempt to articulate issues of almost imponderable centrality for modern life and literature. McKeon proposes with quite breathtaking ambition and considerable intellectual flourish to redefine the novel's key role in those immense cultural transformations that produce the modern world."

"A magisterial work of history and analysis."

"One of the most rigorous and penetrating books I have read—and one of the most widely researched in its coverage of texts, theory, and historical developments."

"A powerful and solid work that will dominate discussion of its subject for a long time to come."