Ancient Liberties? Rewriting the Historical Novel: Thomas Leland, Horace Walpole and Clara Reeve

Taking Walter Scott's novels as paradigmatic, Georg Lukács defines the historical novel as a genre that figures history as abrupt change or progress, a theory which, this essay argues, fails to allow for the alternative political fictions available in eighteenth‐century Britain. When the impact of the Glorious Revolution on the fictions of Leland, Walpole and Reeve is acknowledged, it becomes evident that the notion of inherited liberties was as important to Whig thinkers as the narrative of historical progress. This realisation allows fuller understanding of how these ‘gothic’ works function as historical novels.