Work in the English Novel

Originally published in 1985, this book traces the development of an ideal of work in English writing which runs parallel to that of the Protestant work ethic. The author has called this the myth of vocation: work is seen as the primary source of self-definition, psychic integration and fulfilment. The root, and the purest form, of the idea is to be found in Robinson Crusoe . This work, so seminal in many ways, presents a prototypical middle-class hero, caught in a conflict between the impulse t