The influence of Kuhn’s Structure has been remarkably wide-ranging. The author was honored by the History of Science Society, the Philosophy of Science Association, and the Society for the Social Studies of Science, three very different academic societies. The chapter reviews the impact of Structure and the changing perceptions of its significance, one discipline at a time. It focuses on book reviews of Structure, some written soon after the book was first published, and others written as much as fifty years after its publication, in response to the publication of the fourth edition. It also discusses articles that reflect on the impact of the book and eulogies or appreciations of Kuhn marking his death in 1996.

Centred on the period of the French Revolution (1789–1804), this chapter explains how the revolutionary decade marked a distinct change in the type of fiction available on the French literary market, with the paradoxical increase of translations from the English at a time during which England and France were at war with one another. By focusing on mostly forgotten and overlooked French translators of the English Gothic novel, the chapter shows that French translators of the English Gothic were not only men and women of a certain notoriety, but were also deeply implicated in contemporary political events. Such figures not only actively participated in the circulation of the French new national identity, but also played a significant role in the intercultural exchanges between France and England. Finally, the chapter demonstrates the participation of Gothic novels in the diffusion of republican values, and their coincidence with the sociological emergence of a new and ever-growing ‘democratic’ French readership that had experienced revolutionary events first hand.

This introduction traces the critical reception of Jane Austen’s fiction in terms of the economy of her writing, especially as promoted by George Henry Lewes in the nineteenth century. The chapter examines how Austen often commented on her selection of material, and the interest it might generate, when she wrote her private letters and it points to the relevance of this self-consciousness for her fiction. The chapter goes on to examine young Jane Austen’s fascination with constricted writing spaces as she composed her juvenilia and her similar interest in physically constricted domestic spaces, an interest that continued into her published novels. The chapter argues that the radically contracted spaces of the juvenilia are foundational for Austen’s later writing.

Fiona Sampson looks beyond any simplistic account of legacy in her nuanced tracing of Plath’s continuing influence on British poetry. While Plath left no substantial or explicit articulation of her poetics, her early published work indicates some of her own literary debts. The free verse which eventually muscles its way out of that initial formality is closely related, in both rhythm and register, to exactly contemporary work by Ted Hughes. Almost universally read by contemporary British poets, she contributes a Plathian dimension to contemporary British poetics as a whole. This is less apparent in today’s Confessional free verse, which owes much to life writing and oral forms, than in the continuation, alongside the Hardy/Larkin mainstream, of a more risk-taking, symbolic and higher-register tradition. Its protagonists include Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, Selima Hill and Denise Riley.