Introduction: Novel subjects, sovereignty, and the law
Intimacy, survival, resistance: Daniel Defoe's A journal of the plague year
Body, consent, survival: Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, or, A history of a young lady
Sovereign politeness: David Hume's History of England
Sovereign domesticity: Edward Gibbon's The history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire
The witness and the law: Ann Radcliffe's The Italian
Epilogue: The novel and political modernity: beyond liberalism.