SOURCE: Introduction in, The Excursion, edited by Paula R. Backscheider and Hope D. Cotton, University Press of Kentucky, 1997, pp. ix-xxxviii.

In the following excerpt, Backscheider and Cotton discus the literary context and form of The Excursion, including its critical reception and Brooke's later career; they argue for the novel's significance in the movement towards critical realism.

The Excursion Gi; the Excursion and Its Significance =~ Sand Its Significance

Thomas Cadell … the publisher of David Hume's History of England, Hannah More's Percy and Fatal Falsehood, and Samuel Foote's last four plays brought out Brooke's The Excursion in early summer 1777. Her earlier novels had featured a witty, strong-minded heroine and a sentimental, romantic one. Anne Wilmot in Lady Julia Mandeville had been called "the true woman of fashion" by The Edinburgh Weekly Magazine (13 November 1783), and the heroine of The Excursion is a woman of fashion wanna-be. Maria Villiers, lively, spontaneous, restless...