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Happy editing! --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

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first my welcome at Wikipedia and the toolbox above for new arrivals in this world. You expanded the novel article with a chapter on sequels, praising them as as new as the novel, whose advent you located in the 18th century. The paragraphs are problematic - they only work with eyes wide shut, that is by excluding the entire production of pre 18th century fiction. You use the same remarks to prove that women were more creative as artists, wich I will comment in the following. Your statements will need statistics to become true: How many novels published, how many by men, how many by females and then I want to have the sequel rate (plus, if possible) the creativity rating: --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

the following is your text as I removed it from Novel and my remarks in between and indented

Sequels of 18th-Century Novels edit

The same conditions that allowed for the advent of the novel in the early part of the 18th century also provided for the nearly simultaneous rise of sequels as a common literary sub-genre. In the context of the 18th century, sequel literature is broadly defined as anything written as a follow-up to a previously published text—a definition that includes prequels, interquels, etc.[1]

As said: the "advent of the novel" around 1700 is a chimera. Sequels and prequels were frequent wherever prose fiction was produced before: The entire network of Arthurian fiction is part of a massive system of sequels and prequels, The early modern Amadis that brought the old tradition into the modern world of printing, flourished in sequels, adaptations, imitations - producedd by the original author and authors all around Europe. Many of the most famous 17th-century romances came in sequels - things like the Octavia by Anton Ulrich in Germany just as things like the Atalantis by Delarivier Manley. Robinson stories followed in the 1720s and so it goes on. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

The substantial shift towards a rapidly growing print culture and the rise of the market systemby the early 18th-century meant that an author’s merit and livelihood became increasingly linked to the number of copies of a work he or she could sell, in contrast to the patronage system of the previous centuries. This shift from a text-based culture to one centered on the author led to the “professionalization” of the author— that is, the development of a “sense of identity based on a marketable skill and on supplying to a defined public a specialized service it was demanding”[2]

Please prove that the regular 16th or 17th century novel was produced under patronage. It was marketed as commercial belles lettres by authors who received their money when the delivered the manuscript. They had no share in further profits - this did only change in the course of the 19th-century. --15:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

In one sense, then, sequels became a means to profit further from previous work that had already obtained some measure of commercial success. [3] As the establishment of a readership became increasingly important to the economic viability of authorship, sequels offered a means to establish a recurring economic outlet.

The footnotes are vague and no good source for any such statement. What is said is true and had been true when the Amadis was first published and continued by others in the 16th century.

Interestingly, sequels offered a unique opportunity for 18th-century authors to interact with a readership that had suddenly become much less abstract than the fictionally constructed “audience” of earlier writing. Authors could now be held accountable by their readers as well as receive feedback on their work from the general readership in a way that was not previously possible. With sequels, therefore, came the implicit division of readers by authors into the categories of” desirable” and “undesirable”—that is, those that interpret the text in a way unsanctioned by the author. Only after having achieved a significant reader base would an author was free to alienate or ignore the “undesirable” readers. [4]

Again the statement is tru but not at all a specific thing for 18th century fiction. The Scudéry had published her romances in continuations - which was extremely intriguing as they told real life stories just as they happened. The same is true for Anton Ulrich in the 1680s or Delarivier Manley in 1709 and 1710, they all used their sequels to communicate with the audience.

In addition to economic profit, for male writers the early sequel was also used as a method for to strengthen an author’s claim to his literary property. With weak copyright laws and unscrupulous booksellers willing to sell whatever they could, in some cases the only way to prove ownership of a text was to produce another like it. Sequels in this sense are rather limited in scope, as the authors are merely producing “more of the same” to defend their “literary paternity” [5]

This is gender-biased, do not believe it. The hijacking of titles characterised a market that had not yet developed the gender confronation we can see growing at the end of the 18th century.

Despite this, sequel fiction was not widely practiced among male authors in the eighteenth century. Sequels authored by women writers far outnumbered those written by men.

Statistics, please. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
Women Writers and 18th-Century Sequels edit

Women writers, in contrast to their male counterparts, were extremely prolific producers of sequel fiction in the 18th century. Whereas for male writers sequels served as “models of paternity and property,” for women writers these models were more likely to be seen as transgressive. Instead, the unique recurring readership created by sequels allowed female writers to function within the model of “familiar acquaintances reunited to enjoy the mutual pleasures of conversation,” which allowed writing to be perceived as an “activity within a private, non-economic sphere.” [6] Ironically, of course, it was through this created perception that women writers were able to break into the economic sphere and “enhance their professional status” through authorship.

Statistics, please. Such statements only work with a look on novels published by female authors (and no comparable look at male authors). --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Dissociated from the motives of profit and therefore unrestrained by the need for continuity felt by male writers, female-authored sequel fiction tended to have a much broader scope. Women writers showed an “innovative freedom” that male writers rejected in order to “protect their patrimony.” For example, Sarah Fielding Sarah Fielding’s Adventures of David Simple and its sequels Familiar Letters between the Principle Characters in David Simple and David Simple, Volume the Last are extremely innovative and cover almost the entire range of popular narrative styles of the eighteenth century. [7]

Again an extremely biased judgment. The entire play of gallantry, the interaction of male and female authors before the 1750s is not seen here - and it will prove to have a tradition right into the 19th century. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)Reply
Unofficial Sequels of 18th-century novels edit

Not all the sequels produced during the eighteenth century were penned by the original author. In fact, unauthorized sequels were fairly common. David Brewer designates this phenomenon “imaginative expansion,” a term that encompasses an “array of reading practices…by which the characters in broadly successful texts were treated as if they were both fundamentally incomplete and the common property of all.” [8]

Again not at all unusual. We have dozens of European Robinsons, just as we have fictional characters shared by several authors - medieval authors liked the option. --Olaf Simons (talk) 15:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Many 18th-century authors saw these sort of creative liberties as being in direct conflict with authorial authority. Samuel Richardson,for example, is one 18th-century author that responded particularly strongly against the appropriation of his material by unauthorized third parties. Richardson was extremely vocal in his disapproval of the way the protagonist of his novel Pamela was repeatedly incorporated into unauthorized sequels featuring particularly lewd plots. The most famous of these is Henry Fielding’s parody, entitled “Shamela.” [9]

  1. ^ Betty A. Schellenberg, “The Measured Lines of the Copyist” (from On Second Thought)
  2. ^ Betty A. Schellenberg , “To Renew Their Former Acquaintance’: Print, Gender, and Some Eighteenth-Century Sequels” (from Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel)
  3. ^ Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization: The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction
  4. ^ Betty A. Schellenberg , “To Renew Their Former Acquaintance’: Print, Gender, and Some Eighteenth-Century Sequels” (from Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel)
  5. ^ Betty A. Schellenberg , “To Renew Their Former Acquaintance’: Print, Gender, and Some Eighteenth-Century Sequels” (from Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel)
  6. ^ Betty A. Schellenberg , To Renew Their Former Acquaintance’: Print, Gender, and Some Eighteenth-Century Sequels (from Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel)
  7. ^ Allen Michie, “Far From Simple: Sarah Fielding’s Familiar Letters and the Limits of the Eighteenth Century Sequel”(from On Second Thought)
  8. ^ David Brewer, The Afterlife of the Character, 1726-1825
  9. ^ David Brewer, The Afterlife of the Character, 1726-1825