This volume brings together previously uncollected essays by Ian Watt, one of the major literary critics of the later twentieth century, famed equally for his distinguished work on Joseph Conrad and for his pioneering investigation into the genesis of Englishprose fiction. In addition to the author´s reassessement of The Rise of the Novel the essays in The Literal Imagination include studies of Augustan literature, Gothic and comic fiction, the prose and style of Henry James, and the humanistic imagination of George Orwell.