Charlotte Smith, Epistolarity, Sousveillance

Charlotte Smith’s novel Desmond provides a compelling instance of the Jacobin novel’s formal resourcefulness. Written as a novel in letters, Smith in one sense makes her novel into an exhibition of French Revolutionary sympathies, which her correspondents voice in their impassioned epistolary exchange. At the same time, however, she shrewdly questions the ability of revolutionary ideologies to address the pain and suffering documents in the narrative’s pages. Ultimately, Smith directs attention to the salutary work of correspondence itself, which represents and embodies reformist commitments.