Defending privilege : rights, status, and legal peril in the British novel. / Nicole Mansfield Wright.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed February 28, 2020).

Introduction : A Neglected Inheritance -- Part I : Downward mobility and the safety net of the law -- "Bad citizens" and "insolent foreigners" : Tobias Smollett's elite outsiders and the suspension of legal agency -- Covert critique : genteel victimhood in Charlotte Smith's fictions of dispossession -- Part II : The Pen as a weapon against reform of the law -- Letters of the law : ambivalent advocacy and speaking for the voiceless in Walter Scott's Redgauntlet -- Masters of passion and tongue : white eye-witnesses and fear of black testimony in the pro-slavery novel -- Epilogue : Abiding the Law.

"This study is about the intersection of law and literature in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The author explores how in a turbulent era of political revolution, the abolition of slavery, and increasing class and gender mobility, British literary authors used their work to reshape and manipulate public perceptions of who merits legal agency: the right to initiate a lawsuit, serve as a witness, and seek counsel from a lawyer"-- Provided by publisher

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