The Silver Fork Novel Fashionable Fiction in the Age of Reform

In the early nineteenth century there was a sudden vogue for novels centering on the glamour of aristocratic social and political life. Such novels, attractive as they were to middle-class readers, were condemned by contemporary critics as dangerously seductive, crassly commercial, designed for the 'masses' and utterly unworthy of regard. Until recently, silver-fork novels have eluded serious consideration and been overshadowed by authors such as Jane Austen. They were influenced by Austen at their very deepest levels, but were paradoxically drummed out of history by the very canon-makers who were using Austen's name to establish their own legitimacy. This first modern full-length study of the silver-fork novel argues that these novels were in fact tools of persuasion, novels deliberately aimed at bringing the British middle classes into an alliance with an aristocratic program of political reform.

1. Cultural contexts; 2. Edgeworth, Burney and Austen; 3. Reform and the silver fork novel; 4. Newspapers and the silver fork novel; 5. The topography of silver fork London; 6. Performing reform, silver fork heroines.

This first modern full-length study of the silver-fork novel argues that such novels, wildly popular in the early years of the nineteenth century and yet condemned by contemporary critics as dangerously seductive, were in fact political fictions designed to effect an alliance of the middle-classes and the aristocracy.

Edward Copeland is Emeritus Professor of English at Pomona College, Claremont, California.