William III and Mary II (1689-1702)
As a sometime academic, I once had a (sub-professional) interest in trying to understand how capitalism and the novel grew up together, as it were, during what some historians like to call the “long eighteenth century” of 1688-1815—from the beginning of reign of William III in England (the so-called “Glorious Revolution”) to the end of the Napoleonic wars with France, at the Battle of Waterloo.
By this time both capitalism’s the novel’s “forms”, as it were were somewhat firmly settled, after an initial 100 years+ of experimentation. (N.b. there are……