SOURCE: "Edmund Curll, Mrs. Jane Barker, and the English Novel," in Philological Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 4, October, 1958, pp. 385-99.

Below, McBurney discusses the effect the infamous publisher Edmund Curll had upon the popularity of Barker's romance novels.

In his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, published in 1711, the Earl of Shaftesbury declared that "our modern authors … are turned and modelled (as themselves confess) by the publick relish and current humour of the times…. In our day the audience makes the poet, and the bookseller the author."¹ Of no literary or sub-literary field was this statement more true than of the novel. Because of a combination of economic, social, and political circumstances, the sale of copy to booksellers, rather than subscription, patronage or governmental subsidization, was the most likely resource of the writer of prose fiction.² The business arrangements of the London publishing world, therefore, had considerable influence, through the...