The English Jacobin Novel on Rights, Property and the Law is a study of the radical novel's critique of the evolving social contract in the 1790s. Focusing on selected novels by Thomas Holcroft, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Robert Bage, William Godwin, Mary Hays, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maria Edgeworth, this book examines narrative investigations into the intricate relationships between theories of rights, the requirements of proprietorship in civil society, and the construction of the legal subject.

NANCY E. JOHNSON is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at the State University of New York, New Paltz, where she teaches eighteenth-century English literature. In addition to working on the English Jacobin Novel and Law and Literature, she is editing a volume of Frances Burney's journals and letters (1790-91).

Introduction Narrativizing a Critique of the Contract Debating Rights, Property and the Law Envisaging the New Citizen Acquiring Political Agency Bestowing the Mantle Bibliography Index