Our aim in this course is to trace the development of comic fiction from Henry Fielding to Jane Austen (with perhaps a glance ahead to Dickens). Discussions will focus on form and genre; print culture and the demands of the market; gender, sexuality, and the courtship plot; the unfamiliar world of eighteenth-century humour; social hierarchies and class relations, and many other topics. Students will have ample opportunity to pursue individual research interests. Secondary readings will take in the complex recent scholarship on the rise of the novel, reception history, and the history of reading. We will pay special attention to the increasing influence of women writers (notably Burney and Austen) and will persistently question the long neglect of comic fiction and entertainment in the overall rise of the genre. These topics are now supported by statistical analysis and large-scale cumulative scholarship in April London's forthcoming Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel (2023-24).