The Cure of the Passions and the Origins of the English Novel

This new study examines the role of the passions in the rise of the English novel. Geoffrey Sill examines medical, religious, and literary efforts to anatomize the passions, paying particular attention to the works of Dr. Alexander Monro of Edinburgh, Reverend John Lewis of Margate, and Daniel Defoe, novelist and natural historian of the passions. He shows that the figure of the "physician of the mind" is prominent not only in Defoe's novels, but also in those of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Burney, and Edgeworth.