• 1 For more information on the Monthly and the Critical, see Frank Donoghue’s The Fame Machine: Book (...)

2 My own work seeks to approach didacticism in the novel less as thematic content than through its reception, in order to investigate the initial perception of moral didacticism and arrive at a working definition of the didactic novel as a subgenre in this period. The present paper stems from this wider project. I created two corpora of eighteen novels each, primarily set in late-eighteenth-century Britain, published between 1778 and 1814. Both were built using the reviews of the Monthly Review and the Critical Review. A number of other literary magazines, such as the anti-revolutionary Anti-Jacobin or the radical Analytical Review, flourished at the turn of the nineteenth century. The Monthly and the Critical were chosen to explore early reception of didacticism as the most established publications within this landscape, the first of their kind when they were created in the middle of the eighteenth century and spanning the entire period of inquiry.1 The Monthly is associated with comparatively more liberal politics than the Critical (Donoghue 26). The initial aim of the Monthly Review and the Critical Review upon their creation in the middle of the eighteenth century was to cover all output of prose fiction, although by the end of the century this became untenable given the amount of new publications, and they eventually had to reduce their scope (Christie 282). Beaudoin Millet contends that the opinions expressed in the Reviews constituted a first attempt at defining a standard for literature in prose (342). The critics writing in these publications may therefore be seen as arbiters of literary taste in the growing book market, "discriminat[ing] among reading practices, creating hierarchies among [their] audience by assessing the habits and tastes of different kinds of readers" (Donoghue 28). These particular publications were therefore chosen as the point of departure to assess cultural attitudes toward moral didacticism in fiction during the period.

• 2 The introductory essay to Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s 1810 seminal anthology of English novels The B (...)

3 Only the novels that were described by Monthly and Critical contributors as morally instructive and entertaining or amusing were selected to create the "didactic corpus," in keeping with the traditional dulce et utile formula (Table 1).2 These inclusion criteria reflect Samuel Johnson’s view that novels "are written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introductions to life" in the form of "entertainment" (17). The "reference corpus" includes novels from the same time period, also primarily set in eighteenth-century Britain, that were not described in such terms (Table 2), providing a relative norm against which to compare the primary corpus (Mahlberg 24). My methodology includes a combination of computer-aided analysis and close reading; it follows that all novels had to already be available in digital form, on Gutenberg, Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, or Chawton House’s Women’s Novels Online. I come to two main conclusions in my research: first of all, novels received as didactic do not express moral lessons and sentiments particularly more overtly than others; secondly, and this is the starting-point for this paper, the difference between the two corpora is primarily one of engagement with a certain definition of Englishness, which we see enacted in their representations of diplomatic activity.

• 3 In Tables 1 and 2, the protagonists in bold are those which travel beyond the borders of England, (...)

Table 1. The Didactic Corpus3

• 4 It should be noted that tourism, including the Grand Tour, was periodically affected by war in th (...)
• 5 Generated by TXM, a textometry software which produces concordance lines where the searched keywo (...)
• 6 See for instance Anne Bandry-Scubbi’s ‘Chawton Novels Online, Women’s Writing 1751-1834 and Compu (...)
• 7 In the didactic corpus, 45% of the occurrences of "ambassador" or "embassy" and 95% of the instan (...)

4 Although Englishness and Britishness are sometimes used interchangeably, the two concepts are different and my choice to use the former must be substantiated. Linda Colley argues that the concept of "Britishness" was invented in the eighteenth century, in the context of continual war with several European countries and growing colonial expansion (5). As such, Britishness "was superimposed over an array of internal differences in response to contact with the Other, and above all in response to conflict with the Other" (6). Although Colley resists the notion of "an English ‘core’ imposing its cultural and political hegemony on a helpless and defrauded Celtic periphery," the distinction remains useful in the context of my study: didactic novels center Englishness over Scottishness, Welshness, and indeed Britishness in important ways. Contrasting with Colley, Simon Gikandi claims that Englishness is the product of "a continuous conflict between the center and its Celtic and colonial peripheries," a conflict which the comparison of my two corpora illustrates (xvii). Jennifer Mori also alludes to the tension between the English core and the Celtic margins in the distinction she draws between Britishness and Englishness, specifically in the context of diplomatic activity abroad. For ambassadors, envoys, and their families, she writes that Britishness was "a public identity deliberately assumed, to share in the social and political privileges of Englishness," while "the ethnic self [Scot, Welsh, Irish] was reserved for the company of family and friends" (4). Central to this distinction is the performance of genteel Englishness on the continent for the diplomat and his family, which was linked to values of private domestic virtue over those of public honor (Mori 3). The novels of my didactic corpus foreground and mediate this ideal of proper genteel Englishness for readers, acting as metaphorical territories of diplomacy. Their use of the actual figure of the ambassador or envoy highlights the inherent paradox in developing a cultural ideal of Englishness set in the national territory yet anchored in gentility, a social category associated with international travel, including in the context of diplomatic activity (Black 1-2).4 An overview of the representation of genteel English masculinity in these novels is first of all provided, in contrast with the greater variety of male protagonists featured in the reference corpus. Then, the use of the language of diplomacy is traced in the two corpora along with side characters belonging to the diplomatic profession, using concordance lines.5 The computer-aided analysis conducted singles out two novels from the corpora which materially differ from the rest in their narrative portrayal of diplomatic activity, indicating that they are worth exploring in more detail.6 Consequently, this paper ends on a comparative analysis of two novels by Maria Edgeworth where vocabulary frequency indicates the extensive use she makes of characters involved in diplomatic activity, compared to the rest of the corpora: Patronage from the didactic corpus, and Leonora from the reference corpus.7

• 8 Anthony Mandal has stressed the "dislocation of Austen from the nuanced dialectic between her nov (...)

7Although Moretti claims that Austen is the first author to convincingly offer "a symbolic form capable of making sense of the nation-state," the comparison of the two corpora presented in this study highlights that her narrative use of space exists within a greater tradition of the novel of the period, received as didactic by Monthly and Critical contributors (19).8 The focus on England over its Celtic neighbors in the didactic corpus overshadows the personal ties that some authors had with the latter, such as Irish Maria Edgeworth and Scottish Mary Brunton. Neither Belinda nor Patronage feature Ireland, and while Self-Control starts in Scotland, the greater part of the narrative takes place in London, and the heroine ultimately marries an English gentleman, consequently settling on his estate south of the Scottish border.

• 9 Translations into French facilitated wider dissemination of the works through various European co (...)

8 We might see the novels of both corpora as cultural agents of negotiation of the notion of Englishness with the continent: 83% percent of the works were translated into at least French or German, often both, and in one instance in Spanish as well, within a decade of first publication.9 The proportion is perfectly evenly distributed across the corpora: in both cases, seven novels out of eighteen were translated into one language and eight into two languages, totaling fifteen novels each. Culture, including literary culture, has been both associated with the construction of the idea of the nation and shown to be central to the exercise of diplomacy (Blanning 2; Mori 8). We can see in the widespread practice of translation a possible participation in what Jennifer Mori calls "cultural diplomacy," though of course, not all translated material supported the official diplomatic policy of governments, especially in the particularly polarized 1790s (149).

• 10 There is a striking uniformity in the social categories represented in the novels of the didactic (...)

10 The novels of the didactic corpus may largely be defined as domestic novels, "based upon a plot of courtship that makes explicit some of the text’s central lessons" (Wood 69). Even though the main protagonists are overwhelmingly female, the plots often center on their place in and interactions with their wider social circle, where they inevitably meet different types of men, including the proper gentleman whom they eventually marry and settle with on his landed property in the English countryside.10 Margaret Anne Doody ascribes the following recognizably Christian qualities to the "true gentleman," whose seminal model may be seen to be Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison: "magnanimity, generosity, self-control, humility, sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others" (246). Characters such as Lord Orville in Evelina (1778), Edgar in Edgar; or the Phantom of the Castle (1798), Mr. Hervey in Belinda (1801), Charles from Cœlebs in Search of a Wife (1808), Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility (1811) or Mr. De Courcy in Self-Control (1811), just to name a few, embody these virtues, and the implication of the novels’ endings is that they will continue to epitomize these with their equally virtuous wives as private men on their estates.

• 11 In the novels of the reference corpus, only 44% of protagonists are clearly part of the landed ge (...)

12 The novels of the reference corpus, on the other hand, offer a wider panel of masculinities, including but not limited to the private English gentleman. Some heroes are of lower social standing, such as in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794) or Barbara Hofland’s The Son of a Genius (1812), and the private English estate is less often the stage and ultimate goal of the novels’ plots.11 Elizabeth Inchbald’s Nature and Art (1796) is a notable example of this. The novel opposes two brothers, William who sells his life to "art," has all the outward attributes of the English gentleman but none of his virtues, whereas his penniless brother Henry who marries a singer and raises their son, who shares his father’s name, in an unspecified country in Africa away from English society is portrayed as the "natural" and virtuous one. The younger brother eventually moves back to England, and lives with his son and daughter-in-law in a seaside hut by the end of the novel. The narrative ends on a discussion of poverty and wealth, concluding that the rich have a warped perception of their own affluence, leading to their unhappiness. Young Henry asserts that his genteel uncle, ironically titled the Honourable Justice Norwynne, "in all his writings sacrificed his duty to avarice," leading Henry to "rejoice" in the humble but happy and virtuous laboring life he and his family lead (552).

• 12 In The Culture of Diplomacy in Britain, c. 1750-1830, Jenifer Mori "diplomacy as a profession req (...)
• 13 Didactic novels where envoys or ambassadors appear: Frances Burney’s Evelina (1778) and Cecilia ( (...)

14 We see a similar distinction across the corpora in the representations of Englishness through the portrayals of actual envoys and ambassadors. As Jennifer Mori notes, "most envoys and their wives came from the gentry or the middling sort, the boundaries of which were blurred. Men and women were also under increasing pressure to conform to domestic norms that prioritized private virtue over public honour" (3). This quote largely illustrates the narrative trajectories underpinning the didactic novels. The fact that the value of private virtue over public honor increasingly conflicted with the cosmopolitan codes of conduct which ambassadors and envoys were required to adopt may shed light on the scarcity of actual characters from this walk of life in the novels, in spite of the predominance of the gentry.12 Nevertheless, some ambassadors and envoys do appear, in five novels of the didactic corpus and in three of the reference corpus.13 Through these characters, we see that the world of diplomacy is even more peripheral in the reference corpus than in the didactic corpus, reflecting the lesser concern with proper genteel Englishness found in the novels of the former. Conversely, diplomatic activity appears to hover on the outskirts of the didactic novels, highlighting the inherent tension in crafting an ideal of Englishness anchored in the domestic territory and embodied in a social category historically associated with international travel and political dealings.

• 14 Percentages are given to facilitate comparison, with the understanding that these are relatively (...)
• 15 G. E. Mingay defines this quality as "a distinction acquired principally by birth, education, and (...)

15 The terms "diplomat(s)," "diplomacy," "ambassador(s)", and "envoy(s)" appear 87 times in the didactic corpus, and only 37 in the reference one, highlighting the greater engagement with the topic of diplomacy in the former, whether literal or metaphorical, as discussed below. Seventy occurrences from the didactic corpus may be found in Patronage, or 80%, and in the reference corpus 24 are from Leonora, amounting to 65%.14 Unlike the rest of the corpora, these two novels written by Maria Edgeworth feature main characters who are diplomats; as such, they warrant a separate discussion, provided in the last section of this paper. The "ambassadors" and "envoys" in the novels of both corpora tend to be unnamed, as shown in the context surrounding these keywords in the concordance lines generated by TXM (Table 3). They may be referred to simply as "the ambassador," meaning the English ambassador abroad (Evelina, Anna St. Ives), or with the country they belong to, such as "the Spanish ambassador" (The Heroine). In Evelina and Anna St. Ives, the English ambassadors in France are briefly mentioned to advance the plot in a minor way, by delivering a letter or introducing the main characters to high society in their country of residence, and the Spanish ambassador simply features in the social background of the protagonist in The Heroine. In Hermsprong, the unnamed son of a Nawdoessie chief in North America is also mentioned as having sufficient English to be "employed on a trading embassy" as a negotiator. Diplomacy as a profession is also alluded to as a desirable means to climb the social ladder in Cecilia, for the son of a tradesman to attain the elusive quality of gentility.15

• 16 Three more occurrences appear in Belinda mentioning a "Spanish ambassador," which cannot be descr (...)

• 17 In her 1883 biography of Edgeworth, Helen Zimmern writes: "that Delphine in a manner suggested th (...)
• 18 An ambassador also appears as a prominent character in Edgeworth’s last novel Helen (1834), showi (...)

18 Two novels feature central characters engaged in diplomatic activity who illustrate the debate around proper genteel Englishness found in the two corpora. Maria Edgeworth’s Leonora (1806) and Patronage (1814), from the reference and the didactic corpus respectively, both include main protagonists employed as envoys. Leonora has been considered to be a direct response to Madame de Staël’s Delphine (1802), published in France just a few years earlier, illustrating the kind of transnational dialogue and debate that could take place through works of fiction.17 In their narrative treatment of the figure of the diplomat, the two novels exemplify the dividing line between the corpora in terms of the framing of proper genteel Englishness, which is all the more striking, given that the works are by the same author.18

• 19 The embassy offered to Mr. L―― is referred to 19 times over the course of the novel, making up 52 (...)

19 In Leonora, Mr. L――, Lady Leonora’s husband, is offered a position as ambassador at the Russian court, which he considers taking only as a means of enjoying his illicit romance with Lady Olivia while not abandoning his wife in the eyes of the world—she would remain on his estate in England and be shielded from a possible scandal. Mr. L―― explicitly expresses in a letter to his friend his "wish to have some ostensible reason for going abroad, and this embassy is the only one that presents itself in an unquestionable shape" (149-150). Mr. L―― eventually realizes that he has been manipulated by his mistress Lady Olivia, and never actually takes the embassy, preferring instead to go back to his wife. Although the embassy is mentioned often in the book, it operates as a plot device, with no discussion of what makes a good diplomat, in relation to the qualities of the "true gentleman."19 While English domesticity is preserved by the end of the story, Mr. L―― is by no means presented as a moral equal to his ideally virtuous wife Leonora, whose "temper, fortitude, and persevering affection" have won her a proper domestic ending (224). In this book, diplomacy as a line of work is divorced from the moral ideal of the English gentleman; instead, it symbolically stresses Mr. L――’s deviation from that national ideal through the association of the embassy with infidelity.

• 20 M. de Tourville, a "diplomatist" by profession, is immediately perceived by the young ladies of t (...)
• 21 The term "duplicity" is mentioned 37 times in the didactic corpus, with a quarter appearing in Pa (...)

21 M. de Tourville and Cunningham Falconer are portrayed as conniving "diplomatists," a term almost synonymous in the novel with duplicity.20 The narrator directly opposes "the plain sincerity of the Count" and "the artful plan of the diplomatist," in this case that of the aptly named Cunningham Falconer, which Count Altenberg successfully thwarts (565). Cunningham Falconer is particularly interesting as a negative double of the true gentleman, since he is an English man of the gentry, but is far from embodying the qualities associated with that ideal. He loses his place as envoy and the patronage of the influential politician Lord Oldborough when his self-interested "intrigues" lead to trading secret information with M. de Tourville, to the detriment of Lord Oldborough and the English crown (521). The term "duplicity" appears in this context again to describe Cunningham Falconer, thereby establishing a direct parallel between the English envoy and his French counterpart M. de Tourville.21

• 22 Even long-time politician Lord Oldborough eventually makes the same choice; he retires from his p (...)

25 Significantly, Mr. Temple and Count Altenberg, the two men presented as best suited to diplomatic work through their gentlemanly virtues, both decide to relinquish their line of work in order to retire to the English countryside, each marrying one of the Percy daughters. Ultimately, the kind of virtue needed in the perfect ambassador is ironically suggested to be incompatible with the actual exercise of diplomacy, and private domestic life away from the bustle of the world of international politics is portrayed as the best alternative for the true English gentleman to thrive personally and morally.22 Count Altenberg is a particularly interesting figure, since he is both German and English by birth, and has property in both countries. Thus, his decision to retire to the English countryside "where he can enjoy, better than on any other spot now in the whole compass of the civilised world, the blessings of real liberty, and of domestic tranquility and happiness" is presented as a conscious choice, and operates symbolically as one in favor of Englishness (604). Through the characters of Cunningham Falconer and Count Altenberg who function as doubles, the Englishness of the true gentleman is clearly highlighted as a construction, defined by one’s moral worth and specific qualities over one’s actual country of origin, while not entirely doing away with the latter. In addition, the favorable portrayal of Count Altenberg’s decision to refuse on moral grounds to work for the new German Prince perfectly aligns with and illustrates the framework of these didactic novels, whose distinguishing feature is to foreground domestic happiness on an English country estate as the embodiment of virtuous life.