Commerce, morality and the eighteenth-century novel

"In Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel, Liz Bellamy argues that the evolution of the novel in eighteenth-century Britain needs to be seen in the context of the discursive conflict between economics and more traditional systems of social analysis. In a series of fresh readings of a wide range of novels. Bellamy shows how the novel contributed to the debate over public and private virtues and had to negotiate between commercial and anti-commercial ethics. The resulting choices were crucial in determining the structure as well as the moral content of the novel."--BOOK JACKET.