Ganz’s edited volume seizes upon a fascinating opportunity. The long eighteenth century is one that sees the emergence of a trove of canonical English literary texts. It is also one in which social change leads to fundamental developments in English law, with the height of the Enlightenment giving way to the first stirrings of the Industrial Revolution. It is surprising then that the eighteenth century should have received such limited scholarly attention from legal historians. By combining the subject matter of eighteenth-century law and literature, Ganz’s volume situates itself in a great position to unearth new insights in a neglected field. As Ganz informs us in her introduction, an interdisciplinary study of this nature has the potential to indicate how imaginative writing influenced the development of British law and was itself influenced by legal change. This is a worthy aim that promises interesting and thought-provoking conclusions on the eighteenth century.

The volume begins with Ganz’s overview of the methodology underpinning the project. Ganz provides a very useful summary of the history of the “law and literature” movement and is candid in listing some of the core critiques aimed at the interdisciplinary approach, along with how such work should seek to overcome them. This introduction is welcomed in clarifying the core insights that the interdisciplinary approach can bring, providing a bar and methodological standard for the following substantive chapters.

The first substantive chapter, written by Andrew Benjamin Bricker, examines the reciprocal and causal relationship between the development of ambiguity in satirical literature and changes to interpretation and objectivity within English defamation law. The second chapter, written by David Alff, explores the interaction between pamphlets and the law courts in addressing the emergent issue of wagonways being constructed over the King’s highways in the context of nuisance claims. Chapter 3, by Kathryn D. Temple, analyses legal ambivalence in the context of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, exploring the protagonist’s conflicted attitudes towards plague regulations. Chapter 4, by Suzanna Geiser, analyses professional legal ethics as presented in Fielding’s Tom Jones in relation to the dominant moral philosophies of the day. Ganz’s own substantive chapter then explores a critique of the common law and a corresponding promotion of equity in Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison. Chapter 6, by Simon Stern, traces innovation in the structure and style of Burrow’s law reports, which helped judges such as Mansfield carve out a greater role for precedent in English law.

In the seventh chapter, Stephanie DeGooyer explores debates concerning naturalisation in a range of political, legal and literary contexts – notably Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison and Edgeworth’s Harrington. Chapter 8, by Anne Frey, analyses (particularly through Scott’s Ivanhoe and Chronicles of the Canongate) the tension of the common law being grounded in local customs whilst simultaneously being imposed on other national and social contexts. In the ninth chapter, Mark Schoenfield explores responses to the regulation of poverty and labour across a range of political, legal and literary sources, focusing substantially on the poetic works of Thomas Hood and William Wordsworth. Chapter 10, by Sarah Winter, focuses on debates concerning slavery and liberty through a broad range of sources centring around responses to the 1827 case The Slave, Grace, as well as the satire The History of Mary Prince.

The final chapter, written by Nicole Mansfield Wright, takes a rather different approach from those preceding it. Eschewing a focus on the dynamic between law and literature in the eighteenth century, it instead focuses on how twenty-first-century American conservatives have discussed and prefaced eighteenth-century English literature in support of political aims.

Overall, the book is an interesting one that is recommended to anyone with an interest in eighteenth-century British history. The volume’s greatest strength is its diversity in eighteenth-century historical subject matter. Of a work of such variety, there is naturally the temptation to say something like “there is something here for everyone”. This would be to underplay the strengths of the book. The phrase conjures an image of a confectionery box passed around a family gathering, with each relative sifting through to find something they think vaguely palatable. Instead, the book is interesting as something to be consumed as a whole, cover to cover. This can perhaps rarely be said of scholarly works, especially edited volumes. Taking the book and its verity as a whole – the analysis of a multitude of literary forms (satire, fiction, poetry, pamphlets, etc.) alongside a variety of eighteenth-century writers with differing legal positions, training and subjugation, as well as a range of legal topics (jurisprudence, equity, citizenship, poor law, etc.) – introduces the scholar to a panoply of approaches to legal issues and potential sources. Additionally, the book provides a great overview and accessible introductions to a range of key eighteenth-century socio-legal issues, with most chapters strong on contextual summation. This greatly facilitates scholarly insight and the identification of connections between eighteenth-century subjects and institutions.

While the book rewards those who read it in its entirety, some chapters in particular are likely to resonate well with a wide audience. In terms of arguing some sort of causality between literary and legal change, Stern’s chapter tracking how the structure of law reports facilitated legal precedent is particularly strong, coming to a conclusion that identifies an influence that is both significant and plausible. Similarly, Chapters 7 to 10 are all notable in that they read as more “ideas centric”. Each chapter focuses on a specific idea (citizenship, poverty, etc.) and traces its appearance through a number of different forms and sources. By following a particular idea, each chapter is less concerned with the mere fact of something happening to be “legal” or “literary”. This works well, with such chapters tending to contain interesting and feasible analysis.

Indeed, returning to Ganz’s emphasis on methodology provides a useful (and internally promoted) set of criteria by which to judge the content of the book. Both between and within chapters throughout the collection, there are degrees to which methodological interest is generated. On the one hand, chapters occasionally fall into merely observing that sometimes literature refers to the law or sometimes the law addresses social problems that books might have also been written about. At the other end of the scale, significant methodological interest is sometimes generated by observing specific points where literature may have influenced or sparked legal development or that literature may respond in content or form very specifically to precise points of doctrine or legal change.

Of course, the more methodologically interesting the chapter, the more precarious or tenuous its claims are likely to appear. This is sometimes the case in the present volume. In this regard, it is suggested that analysis across the volume presents two core dangers: (1) too narrow a perspective and (2) too stretched a causality. The following couple of examples chosen to illustrate this are meant only as that, examples. Picking such examples is to affirm the authors in question as making interesting claims and doing something methodologically significant enough to be worthy of discussion.

First, the analysis examining the causal relationship between literary and legal change can generate a perspective that seems overly limited. For example, Andrew Benjamin Bricker makes the interesting claim that the emergence of a satirical literature, which refrained from explicit and direct insult, helped move English defamation law towards a more objective community-centric approach to textual interpretation. However, in focusing purely on these two factors (the emergence of new satire and interpretative changes in defamation law), the chapter ignores other potential factors and influences. For instance, the chapter does not mention the key historical context of defamation previously being situated in the ecclesiastical courts as part of the canon law, nor the later propensity of the secular courts to alter the offence of defamation in line with the business aims of the court. Regarding the former, for instance, the author describes the emergent “sociocentric” view of the interpretation of satire by noting that interpretation becomes “a learned set of conventions produced by the institutions that have authorized them”. Yet, such a description of interpretation fits remarkably well with the idea of theology and church practice, and thus may well actually find strong grounding in the very origins of the offence. If we are being generous, we might say that such causal arguments regarding law and literature may be incomplete and only a fragment of the whole picture. This is perhaps not particularly damning – the author nowhere claims to be writing a complete history of the law of defamation. It may well be enough to simply identify an interesting causal connection. Yet, if we are being critical, we may question whether assessing only a given fragment has the potential to distort understanding of the whole. If we were to take the influence of satirical writing out of isolation and consider it alongside other factors, we might reach very different conclusions as to the nature of English defamation law. The problem this creates for the methodology, and the present volume, is that it is often difficult to discern whether the account you are reading is one legitimately confined or one that might inadvertently prove distortive. The reader is always prompted to question whether law and literature really is the best lens through which to view any given issue.

Second, the analysis examining the causal relationship between law and literature can often appear slightly strained. For example, Ganz argues that the protagonist in Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison “relies upon and extends emerging principles of equity to rectify injustices enshrined in and fostered by English common and statutory law” when he deals privately with issues within his family regarding wills, bequests and marriages. Ganz distinguishes equity as a specific system of English courts and norms from the Latin aequitas, simply meaning fairness or impartiality. That considerations of aequitas are reflected in the character of Sir Charles is clear and well argued by Ganz. The more methodologically significant claim though, that the character of Sir Charles says something specifically about English equity (as opposed merely to fairness), is a stimulating idea that requires a fuller development. Ganz frequently notes the protagonist’s impartiality and “exceptional ability to adopt other points of view”, alongside the taking of a different approach in family affairs than what the common law might dictate. But it is not clear why this should be taken as a comment specifically on the English system of equity, as opposed to either just aequitas, a critique of the common law aimed at reform or simply the view that heads of households should avoid litigiousness and deal with issues privately according to Christian virtue. Similarly, in relation to the dispute resolving actions of the protagonist, Ganz frequently notes sentiments such as “Sir Charles again goes further than Chancery did”. But this seems to be just to say that there is little substantive overlap in the actions of Sir Charles and the norms espoused by the Chancery. In this sense, throughout the volume, the methodology of law and literature trying to find something specifically and precisely legal in literary texts sometimes leads to interesting, but perhaps slightly strained analysis.

It may be the case that such methodological challenges are an inherent challenge and tension within the law and literature methodology. Perhaps it is fine that different individuals will see the causal links drawn between law and literature as more or less evident in any given instance. Regardless, the volume is thought-provoking not only in its substantive discussion of the eighteenth century, but also in its furtherance of a distinct and interesting methodology.