"Gores first analyzes Tobias Smollett's Humphry Clinker and Jane Austen's Persuasion in conjunction with visual evidence of social settings they contain, such as the London pleasure gardens of Ranelagh and Vauxhall. Through this analysis, he describes how assertions of identity and rank were becoming more complicated as social space was shaped by the architectural articulation of space and the codification of etiquette.".

"He next examines Sophia Lee's novel The Recess, along with prints and sketches of ruins, to place the monastic ruin at the focus of desire to repress discontinuity in the past, which in turn permitted individuals to conceive of constructing identity based on genealogy.

Then, through a study of Henry Fielding's Amelia, he discusses portrait miniatures and silhouettes as fetishized symbols of erotic ties, showing how images of a beloved, with their promises for the future, were used as a basis for constructing individual identity."--BOOK JACKET.