Cover; Half-title; Title page; Copyright information; Table of contents; List of figures; List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Reconsidering Secret History; Part I Seventeenth-Century England; 1 Paradise Lost as a Secret History; Heroic Poetry; Secret History; The Novel; Notes; 2 Secret History and Seventeenth-Century Historiography; Secrets Omitted and Disseminated; 'A Story Fit to Gain Credit': Secret History as Historical Writing; Notes; 3 Secret History and Restoration Drama; Notes; 4 Secret History and Allegory; Notes; 5 Secret History and Amatory Fiction

Competing Plots: Amatory Fiction Versus Secret HistoryReading Philander: Libertine Hero or Political Traitor?; Wizards and Whig History; Notes; 6 Secret History and Spy Narratives; Spy Narratives and the Novel; Divided Subjectivities; Dangerous Liaisons; Notes; Part II Eighteenth-Century Britain; 7 Secret History, Parody, and Satire; Parodying Conventions of Secret History; Parodying 'Keys'/'Keys' as parody; Parody, Secret History, and Women; Parody, Secret History, and Theory; Notes; 8 Secret History and It-Narrative; Chrysal; or It-centred It-Narrative and the Secret History of Objectivity

Carlo or Canine It-Narrative and the Secret History of Carlo's Dilemma; Notes; 9 Secret History, Oriental Tale, and Fairy Tale; Notes; 10 Secret History and the Periodical; The Review: Fragmentation and Design; The Athenian Mercury: Curiosity and Secrecy; Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies: Secrecy, Sexuality and Consumption; Notes; 11 Secret History and Censorship; Censorship, Secret Writing and Secret Histories; Masks, Manners and Novels; Notes; 12 Secret History and Anecdote; Tristram Shandy; Mansfield Park; Notes; 13 Secret History in the Romantic Period; Open Secrets, 1790s-1810s

United Irishman Periodicals: The 'Secret' Agency of PrintSecret History of the Historical Novel: Scott's Genre Reform; Austen's Politics: Secret History in Emma and Mansfield Park; Notes; Part III France and America; 14 Secret History in Pre-Revolutionary France; Notes; 15 Secret History in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century France; Notes; 16 Secret History in British North America and the Early Republic; Secret History in Colonial Newspapers and the Book Trade; William Byrd's Secret Histories; Secret History and Independence; Notes

17 Secret History in the Early Nineteenth-Century AmericasFiction, History, and the Novel; Story-Papers, the Penny-Press, and 'True Crime'; Confessions of. Violence
Race, Slavery, and the Secret History; Notes; Epilogue; Notes; Select Bibliography; Primary Sources; Secondary Sources; Index