Sentiment and Sociability The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century [Paperback]

This study examines the autobiographical writing of Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, and David Hume, who chronicled the peculiarly intimate relationships between the texts they produced and the social lives they lived. Each relied on a language of feeling to represent social bonds they considered necessary, discovering, through their writing, a sociability dependent on the communication of passions and sentiments. This discovery, Mullan argues, played a critical role in the development of the eighteenth-century fiction now called sentimental.

Mullan's prose is stylish...and his argument compelling...this is a remarkable study of sentimentalism--one in which even the would-be sentimentalist will find much to applaud. --Times Literary Supplement

Admirable study .... notes and queries

Wise and compelling. --ANQ

Mullan has provided a stimulating study which is not afraid to explore complex themes and be provocative in its judgements. --Times Higher Education Supplement

Excellent. --John Bayley,The London Review of Books