| Summary: | Society in some sense, is the common birthright of all novelists. But for each writer, the word “society” has some particular meaning that is more precise than any general, all-inclusive definition. Society, for Jane Austen, meant the class-structure of her day and of her country. Nothing outside that concerned here as a novelist. The whole broad and varied expanse of eighteenth-century English life composed the society Henry Fielding depicted. Some novelists are interested primarily in a highly sophisticated and intellectual group of people, others in low life, and others still, in people of many social levels.
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