1. Introduction: fiction and society in eighteenth-century Britain -- 2. Amatory fiction: Behn, Manley, Haywood -- 3. Defoe: mapping social totality -- 4. From passion to suffering: Richardson and the transformation of amatory fiction -- 5. Fielding: system and satire -- 6. Smollett: resentment, knowledge, and action -- 7. Women novelists and the transformation of fiction -- 8. Sentimental narrative: philanthropy and fiction