Early novelists such as Samuel Richardson, Daniel Defoe, and Laurence Sterne helped create the formula for the modern novel.

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Sentiment from Afra Behn to Marivaux / James R. Foster -- Deserts, ruins and troubled waters : female dreams in fiction and the development of the gothic novel / Margaret Anne Doody -- The comic sublime and Sterne's fiction / Jonathan Lamb -- Fielding : the comic reality of fiction / Sheridan Baker -- Crime and adventure / Paula R. Backscheider -- An architect's imagination : the rise of Bath / Simon Varey -- The Job controversy, Sterne, and the question of allegory / Jonathan Lamb -- Fighting the Pharisees / Patrick Reilly -- Mythic and historic language in Smollett / John M. Warner -- The tested woman plot / Lois E. Bueler -- The Don Juan plot / Lois E. Bueler -- Caesar's toils : allusion and rebellion in Oroonoko / David E. Hoegberg -- Gulliver's travels and the contracts of fiction / Michael Seidel -- Serializing a self / Thomas Keymer.