Novels don't fit into anthologies very well, and yet . . .
. . . and so from the 19th Century on, anthologies are less and less able to represent British literature.
Early Novels: A new popular form:
--The novel is a purely commercial form, developed to sell to a new, middle-class, reading audience. (Not a theatre audience and not a political audience.) There is no prestige element at first. Nevertheless, novels were so popular that they led to the establishment of subscription libraries, such as the one Lydia Languish patronizes. (The first had been founded in Leeds in 1768.) For example, see the inset of the second scene of The Rivals (1775).
--Note the elaborate realism (p. 2492) of the opening of Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). This promise of gritty truth is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the new form.
--On the same note, the language is not poetic & is free of classical allusions. It is to be read by the same audience that read the Spectator. They have a middle-class sort of education, and are often female.
- Women: an important subject matter of early novels:
- --The scholarly article, "The Books of Lydia Languish's Circulating Library." —See the first page of the article.
- --Moll Flanders (1722) by Daniel Defoe. —Full title of the book: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.
- --Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) by Samuel Richardson, a printer and author of a book of model letters (See the table of contents). It's an epistolary novel, and therefore supposedly realistic.
Note that by date, Sense and Sensibility (1811), by Jane Austen, belongs to the Romantic era, and Jane Eyre (1847), by Charlotte Brontë, belongs to the Victorian era. It's my idea that Austen represents a Enlightenment orientation and Brontë a Romantic orientation.