Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences

We give you the scuttlebutt on academic journals—aiding you in selecting the right journal for publication—in reviews that are sometimes snarky, sometimes lengthy, always helpful. Written by Princeton University graduate students and Wendy Laura Belcher.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction

For those interested in publishing articles that discuss, in its broadest sense, prose “fiction” (covering genres far beyond the novel, including theater, broadsides and satirical prints or caricatures, the encyclopedia, satiric prose, and even preaching and very occasionally poetry) from a European and transatlantic context, mostly written in English but occasionally in French.

According to their guidelines for submission, the “editors seek submissions that conceive of “fiction” in its broader sense and expand the frameworks of critical, historical, and theoretical discussion.” The range of forms of text covered are revealingly wide, and this range allows articles to engage with a rich array of questions including about medium, tone, personhood, form, genre, historical and publication context, reception, textual studies, new perspectives on canonical authors (a range of articles take up Richardson’s Clarissa newly and revealingly), and epistemological and philosophical problems of the eighteenth-century as they affect formal or thematic aspects of the work under study. Mediation and social/publication contexts (especially some emphasis on contemporary reception) are particularly frequent themes in recent articles. Articles refer frequently to sources and theoretical contexts broadly contemporary to the work under discussion and not to later theoretical concepts (with an occasional and apologetic leap, always acknowledged to verge beyond the historical frame). Articles often approach a single author as a central lens through which to view a wider problem or question of the eighteenth century; in this way, many articles are both focused and intervene in a particular debate about an author but are also widely relevant to eighteenth-century scholars who do not focus on the author or even genre under discussion.

 Useful for Submission

Word Count: 6,000-8,000 words

Issues per year: 4

Current volume number (in 2017): 29.3

Articles per year: 5-6 per issue (more with special issues); appr 20-24

Citation style: Chicago

Abstract length (if required): 175 words and written in the language of the paper.

Keywords: The journal also requests that you send at least 5 keywords or phrases that will enhance the discoverability of your article online, as well as a contributor’s note stating your institutional affiliation, a representative publication, and your current research interests.

Upcoming special issues: You can check the current call for articles. The next one is Material Fictions: manuscripts exploring material cultures of the long eighteenth century and the fictions crafted in and through objects, built environments, and other material entities. Editors Eugenia Zuroski, McMaster University, and Michael Yonan, University of Missouri.

Relevant Editors: ECF Editor Eugenia Zuroski,  managing editor Jacqueline Langille

About Wendy Belcher

Associate Professor, Princeton University, Department of Comparative Literature and the Center for African American Studies. Author of Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success. Instructor of Deep Reading Journals as Publishing Praxis.

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This entry was posted on April 27, 2017 in Eighteenth-Century Journals, Humanities Journals, Literary Theory Journals.