The Augustan Reprint Society PREFACES TO FICTION Georges de Scudéry, Preface to _Ibrahim_ (1674) Mary De la Riviere Manley, Preface to _The Secret History of Queen Zarah_ (1705) Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens, _The Jewish Spy_ (1744), Letter 35 William Warburton, Preface to Volumes III and IV (1748) of Richardson's _Clarissa_ Samuel Derrick, Preface to d'Argens's _Memoirs of The Count Du Beauval_ (1754) With an Introduction by Benjamin Boyce Publication Number 32 Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California 1952 * * * * * GENERAL EDITORS H. RICHARD ARCHER, _Clark Memorial Library_ RICHARD C. BOYS, _University of Michigan_ JOHN LOFTIS, _University of California, Los Angeles_ ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, _University of Michigan_ ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, _State College of Washington_ BENJAMIN BOYCE, _Duke University_ LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, _University of Michigan_ CLEANTH BROOKS, _Yale University_ JAMES L. CLIFFORD, _Columbia University_ ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, _University of Chicago_ EDWARD NILES HOOKER, _University of California, Los Angeles_ LOUIS A. LANDA, _Princeton University_ SAMUEL H. MONK, _University of Minnesota_ ERNEST MOSSNER, _University of Texas_ JAMES SUTHERLAND, _University College, London_ H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., _University of California, Los Angeles_ INTRODUCTION The development of the English novel is one of the triumphs of the eighteenth century. Criticism of prose fiction during that period, however, is less impressive, being neither strikingly original nor profound nor usually more than fragmentary. Because the early statements of theory were mostly very brief and are now obscurely buried in rare books, one may come upon the well conceived "program" of _Joseph Andrews_ and _Tom Jones_ with some surprise. But if one looks in the right places one will realize that mid-eighteenth century notions about prose fiction had a substantial background in earlier writing. And as in the case of other branches of literary theory in the Augustan period, the original expression of the organized doctrine was French. In Georges de Scudéry's preface to _Ibrahim_ (1641)[1] and in a conversation on the art of inventing a "Fable" in Book VIII (1656) of his sister Madeleine's _Clélie_ are to be found the grounds of criticism in prose fiction; practically all the principles are here which eighteenth-century theorists adopted, or seemed to adopt, or from which they developed, often by the simple process of contradiction, their new principles.