The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel brings together two traditionally antagonistic fields, book history and narrative theory, to challenge established theories of "the rise of the novel." Covering British novelists from Richardson to George Eliot, this study asks why the epistolary novel disappeared, how the book review emerged, and how editors' reproduction of old texts has shaped authors' production of new ones. This provocative book promises to change the way we think about the future of intellectual property, and the role that anthologies play in the classroom.