Novel of circulation

• 1709 Charles Gildon, The Golden Spy has been regarded by modern scholars as "the first, fully-fledged it-narrative in English".Jonathan Lamb (2001), 'Modern Metamorphoses and Disgraceful Tales', Critical Inquiry 28:1 (2001), pp. 133–66, reprinted in Bill Brown (ed.), Things (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 193–226 (p. 213). But for his contemporaries, it tends to be read as "a Menippean satire, a re-adaptation of Apuleius's The Golden Ass and a sequel to The New Metamorphosis [i.e. Gildon's adaptation of The Golden Ass in 1708]".Jingyue Wu (2017), '"Nobilitas sola est atq; unica Virtus": Spying and the Politics of Virtue in The Golden Spy; or, A Political Journal of the British Nights Entertainments (1709)', Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 40:2 (2017), pp. 237–53 doi: 10.1111/1754-0208.12412 Later, an episodic structure in which objects "spied" on people became established.{{cite book|author=Olivia Murphy|title=Jane Austen the Reader: The Artist as Critic|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=vjSfrcVksSIC&pg=PA79|date=22 February 2013|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=978-1-137-29241-4|page=79}} Other generic terms used are "object tales" or "spy novels".{{cite book|author=Mark Blackwell|title=The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=QS035TUNxpwC&pg=PA10|year=2007 |publisher=Bucknell University Press|isbn=978-0-8387-5666-9|page= 10}}
• 1710. Joseph Addison Adventures of a ShillingAddison, Joseph. "Adventures of a Shilling." The Spectator 10 (1710).
• 1734 Anonymous, The Secret History of an Old Shoe{{cite book|author=Jolene Zigarovich|title=Sex and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=1pUd08lLd-wC&pg=PA58|date=2 May 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-136-18237-2|page=58}}
• 1742 Claude Crébillon, The Sopha, a Moral Tale{{cite book|author=Mark Blackwell|title=The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=QS035TUNxpwC&pg=PA135w|year=2007 |publisher=Bucknell University Press|isbn= 978-0-8387-5666-9|pages= 135–8}}
• 1751 Francis Coventry The History of Pompey the Little
• 1753 Susan Smythies, The Stage-coach: containing the character of Mr. Manly, and the history of his fellow-travellers
• 1754 Anonymous, History and Adventures of a Lady's Slippers and Shoes{{cite book|author=Wolfram Schmidgen|title=Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Law of Property|url= https://archive.org/details/eighteenthcentur0000schm|url-access=registration|year=2002|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn= 978-1-139-43482-9 |page= [https://archive.org/details/eighteenthcentur0000schm/page/128 128]}}
• 1760 Edward Phillips, The Adventures of a Black Coat{{cite book|author=Christina Lupton|title=Knowing Books: The Consciousness of Mediation in Eighteenth-Century Britain |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=iHuSy_V9cQsC&pg=PA49|date=29 November 2011|publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press|isbn= 978-0-8122-0521-3|pages=49–}}
• 1760–5 Charles Johnstone, Chrysal; or, The Adventures of a Golden Guinea
• 1767 Charles Perronet, Dialogue between the Pulpit and Reading-Desk
• 1769 Tobias Smollett, The History and Adventures of an Atom
• 1771 Thomas Bridges, The Adventures of a Bank-Note Nicholas Hudson (2005) "[http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/eighteenth_century_fiction/summary/v017/17.4.hudson.html Social Rank, 'The Rise of the Novel,' and Whig Histories of Eighteenth-Century Fiction]", Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Vol. 17: Iss. 4 (2005), p. 587
• 1783 Theophilus Johnson, Phantoms: or, The Adventures of a Gold-Headed Cane{{cite book|author=David Scott Kastan|title=The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=DlMUSz-hiuEC&pg=RA3-PA114|year=2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-516921-8|page= 114}}
• 1790 Helenus Scott, The Adventures of a Rupee{{cite book|author=Liz Bellamy|title=Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=uAghSJhTA3EC&pg=PA120|date=26 September 2005|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn= 978-0-521-02037-4|page=120}}
• 1799 Edward Augustus Kendall, The Crested Wren
• 1813 Mary Pilkington, The Sorrows of Caesar, or, The Adventures of a Foundling Dog
• 1816 Mary Mister, The Adventures of a Doll
• 1873 Annie Carey, The History of a Book{{cite journal |last=Price |first=Leah |title=From The History of a Book to a 'history of the book' |journal=Representations |volume=108 |issue=1 |date=2009 |pages=120–138 |doi=10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.120|s2cid=146277774 |url=http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:2641801 }}
• 1880 Nellie Hellis, The Story He was told; or, The Adventures of a Teacup{{cite book|author=Mark Blackwell|title=The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=QS035TUNxpwC&pg=PA142|year=2007 |publisher=Bucknell University Press|isbn= 978-0-8387-5666-9|page= 142}}
• 1897, John William Fortescue, The Story of a Red Deer{{cite book|author=Mark Blackwell|title=The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=QS035TUNxpwC&pg=PA144|year=2007 |publisher=Bucknell University Press|isbn=978-0-8387-5666-9|page = 144}}

Twentieth-century examples include Ilya Ehrenburg's The Life of the Automobile (1929),{{cite book|first1=Alberto|last1= Toscano|first2=Jeff|last2=Kinkle|title=Cartographies of the Absolute |publisher=Zero|year=2015|pages=192, 285}} Holling C. Holling's Paddle-to-the-sea (1941),{{cite book|editor=Wyndham Wise|editor-link=Wyndham Wise|title=Take One's Essential Guide to Canadian Film|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m4Y_OgckDmIC&q=The%20Street%20Leaf%20Richler&pg=PA159|date=2001-09-08|publisher=University of Toronto Press|isbn=978-0802083982|pages=159|chapter=Paddle to the Sea}} and E. Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes (1996), {{cite book|author=E. Annie Proulx|title= Accordion Crimes|year=1996|url= https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780684831541 |publisher=Scribner |isbn= 0-684-83154-6|url-access=registration}} and Flat Stanley.{{Cite journal|last=Hoewisch|first=Allison|title=Creating Well-Rounded Curricula with 'Flat Stanley': A School-University Project.|journal=The Reading Teacher|year=2001|volume=55|issue=2|pages=154–168|jstor=20205027}}

With works of Mary Ann Kilner of the 1780s, Adventures of a Pincushion and Memoirs of a Peg-Top, it-novels became part of children's literature.{{cite book|author=Mark Blackwell|title=The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-narratives in Eighteenth-century England|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QS035TUNxpwC&pg=PA280|year=2007|publisher=Bucknell University Press|isbn=978-0-8387-5666-9|page=280}} One offshoot was a style of satirical children's verse made popular by Catherine Ann Dorset, based on a poem by William Roscoe, The Butterfly's Ball and The Grasshopper's Feast.{{cite book|author1=Frederick Burwick|author2=Nancy Moore Goslee|author3=Diane Long Hoeveler|title=The Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CDuCchT6PE0C&pg=PA237|date=30 January 2012|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1-4051-8810-4|page=237}} Quite generally, it-narrative in the 19th century is typified by an animal narrator.{{cite book|author=Laura Brown|title=Homeless Dogs & Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination|url=https://archive.org/details/homelessdogsmela00brow|url-access=registration|year=2010|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=978-0-8014-4828-7|page=[https://archive.org/details/homelessdogsmela00brow/page/123 123]}}

It has been remarked that the slave narrative genre of the 18th century avoided being confused with the it-narrative, being thought of as a type of biography.{{cite book|author=John Ernest|title=The Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EkisAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA70|year=2014|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-973148-0|page=70}}

The plot of Middlemarch has been seen to be structured, initially, by a circulation; but to end in a contrasting "subject narrative".{{cite book|author=Leah Price|title=How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SJ__Aed3N30C&pg=PA108|date=9 April 2012|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-4218-6|page=108}}

Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle have argued that one popular form of hyperlink cinema, a genre of film characterized by intersecting and multilinear plots, constitutes a contemporary form of it-narrative.{{cite book|first1=Alberto|last1=Toscano|author-link=Alberto Toscano|first2=Jeff|last2=Kinkle|title=Cartographies of the Absolute|publisher=Zero Books|year=2015|page=192}} In these films, they argue, "the narrative link is the characters' relation to the film's product of choice, whether it be guns, cocaine, oil, or Nile perch."

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Category:Literary genres

Category:Children's literature