Summary
Francis Coventry’s History of Pompey the Little represents one of the better known examples 
of today otherwise neglected eighteenth-century English novels of non human-characters. By 
pointing at thus far unacknowledged dimensions of the text, the article challenges the established 
reading of the book as put forward by Liz Bellamy in the theory of the ‘novels of circulation’. 
According to Bellamy, the peregrinating animals and objects of these narratives represent 
circulating commodities and thus symbolize alienated commercial society. Demonstrating 
that Pompey the lapdog rather functions as a gift and a gossip, this essay offers an alternative 
interpretation which opens up a different perspective on Coventry’s representation of society. 
Following from this, the paper aims at situating Pompey the Little’ within broader socio-cultural 
context of eighteenth-century England, as well as reflects on its place in fiction of the period. As 
such it advocates socio-historical approaches to literature.
Key words: eighteenth-century English fiction, novels with non-human characters, 
commercialism, sociability, gossip.
 Povzetek
History of Pompey the Little Francisa Coventryja je eden najbolj znanih primerov danes sicer že 
precej pozabljenega žanra angleške proze osemnajstega stoletja, tj. romana, kjer v vlogi glavnega 
junaka nastopa predmet ali žival, v našem primeru pes Pompey. S tem ko pokaže na še ne 
opažene dimenzije besedila, članek preizprašuje etablirano razumevanje dela, kot ga v svoji teoriji 
t.i. ‘romanov kroženja’ uveljavi Liz Bellamy. V njenem branju pohajkujoče živali in predmeti, 
ki prehajajo od enega k drugemu lastniku, predstavljajo krožeče tržno blago in posredno 
simbolizirajo odtujeno potrošniško družbo. Pričujoči esej pokaže, da je vloga Pompeyja bolj kot 
prodajnemu artiklu bliže funkciji daru in da pes deluje predvsem kot opravljivec, kar ponudi 
alternativno interpretacijo romana, ki omogoči drugačen pogled na Coventryjevo podobo 
družbe. Prispevek želi Coventryjevo zgodbo umestiti v širši družbeno-kulturni kontekst Anglije 
osemnajstega stoletja in ponovno premisliti njen položaj znotraj proze tega časa. Kot tak tukajšnji 
premislek sodi med primere družbeno-kulturnega pristopa obravnavanja literature.
Ključne besede: angleška proza osemnajstega stoletja, romani z nečlovečnimi junaki, opravljanje, 
družabnost, potrošništvo.
 DOI: 10.4312/elope.4.1-2.107-120

Although considered minor eighteenth-century fiction, Pompey the Little received its share of 
attention in past literary debates. %e popularity it gained in its time, the non-human narrator, 
Coventry’s connections with Fielding – all of this incited sufficient interest for it even to be 
published by the elite Oxford University Press.
1
 A considerable number of things regarding the 
book have therefore already been told.
2
 
Rather than lingering on the already known, I would like to discuss Coventry’s narrative 
through the lens of the subgenre to which it is said to belong – the novel of circulation
3
 – and 
try to think about how it engages with certain issues of its time – notably the representation 
of the society – thereby assessing fiction as a social, historical and cultural form. After 
redefining the title hero as a device rather than a character, and briefly locating the work in the 
wider contextual frame with regard to the contemporary fiction, reception, and the generic 
conventions, I will move away from the literary aspects into exploring the more particular 
traits of Pompey’s peregrinations, and conclude by framing the essay within the socio-historical 
approaches to literature. 
Nearly all discussions of Pompey the Little, almost as a rule, refer to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s 
praise of this short narrative.
4
 Indeed, it is curious how this ‘learned lady’, an avid reader and 
respected writer, singled out this rather peculiar book. After receiving “the case of Books” from 
her daughter and reading for a whole day and part of the night, Lady Mary reports back. In 
a letter from February 16
th
 1752 she comments on Peregrine Pickle, on the inserted Memoirs 
by Lady Vane, on the Parish Girl, but she does not get too excited about any of the books in 
particular, until towards the evening, when 
Candles came, and my Eyes grown weary I took up the next Book merely because I 
suppos’d from the Title it could not engage me long. It was Pompey the Little, which has 
really diverted me more than any of the others, and it was impossible to go to Bed till it 
was finish’d. It is a real and exact representation of Life as it is now acted in London, as it 
was in my time, and as it will be (I do not doubt) a Hundred years hence, with some little 
variation of Dress, and perhaps Government. I found there many of my Acquaintance. 


Lady T[ownshend] and Lady O[rford] are so well painted, I fancy’d I heard them talk, and 
have heard them say the very things there repeated. 
 [Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. R. Halsband 1967, /4]
%is lucid insight certainly draws one’s attention. It is exact, informative and – gossipy. As I will 
try to show, the notion of gossip is something which importantly characterizes the book itself.
 It is significant that Lady Mary nowhere mentions that this is (supposed to be) a history of a 
dog. Because in fact, it is not – the subtitle notwithstanding. Pompey is indeed a lapdog, and 
we do learn about his life, but we learn much more about his successive owners. %is makes the 
title itself a sort of a statement, inscribing the text within a certain tradition, while escaping it at 
the same time.
5
 It quickly becomes clear that the scrupulously-recorded Pompey’s date of birth, 
his family origins and the time of his death, with a summary of his character traits in the end, is 
in fact all that resembles a proper biography. %e presence of Pompey the lapdog is theoretical 
rather than practical. He is simply not very important. %roughout the book we are offered very 
little sense of what he is like or what he thinks; he functions like a cipher, at most mirroring 
his owners’ characters and thus adapting a new role with each ensuing chapter. %is impression 
is strengthened by the third person narrative in which Pompey is passively handled from one 
owner to the other, being either lost or found, given to or disposed of, bought and sold, but 
never actively engaged in what is happening, which makes Coventry’s constant referral to him as 
a hero even more ironic, and again underlines his play with the established generic conventions, 
a common occurrence in the print culture of the time.
All this, however, only makes Pompey a much better narrative device. %e dog obviously serves 
as a string on which the episodes are threaded, and as such functions as an efficient handle to 
introduce a variety of characters and events, a motley range of morals and manners. Characters 
differ in status, as well as in age and genre; each brings his or her own stock of concerns (and 
gossip!), and so the reader is presented with a whole panorama of issues, although they more or 
less all, each from its own angle, shed light on the fashionable London society.
6
 While moving 
spatially from Italy to England, from London to Bath, then to Cambridge and back to London, 
Pompey goes through 23 different owners. Despite some attempts for unification – such as 
establishing superficial, usually retrospective connections between the characters, and in the end 
returning Pompey to one of the first owners – the narrative dissolves in a number of micro plots 
which generate new stories and amplify the impression of all-inclusiveness, and of encompassing 
all social types, personality profiles and different occurrences. It is at once universal and particular, 
just as Lady Mary observed. 


What might be read as a failed attempt to produce a story of a dog thus reveals itself to be a well-
planned strategy. As his repeated apologies for having so long neglected the hero clearly show,
7
 
Coventry seems to know exactly that he was subverting expectations and he even appears to be 
having fun with it. 
Relocating the hero from representing a character to serving as a device opens up many new 
possibilities. First, it allows the introduction of a variety of topics without an effort to tie them 
together, thus avoiding the often difficult task of bringing various scenes within the perception 
of one hero: A non-human protagonist can report on what is otherwise concealed, it can go 
or be present where other people cannot. And second, being devoid of volition, of human 
comprehension and moral judgement, it can serve as a very convenient technique for the satirical 
representation of the world: the author can hide behind the uninterested observer, an innocent 
dog, and even though the account is offensive in itself, the reader can be the only one to blame 
for perceiving it as such. It hardly needs to be stressed that !e History of Pompey the Little is 
indeed a satire.
 %is device was not new. Non-human narrators appear already in ancient legends and folktales; 
even before the Aesop’s talking animals (Fables, 6
th
 century B.C.), and examples of them being 
used as a device for linking picaresque narrative through a satirical lens also date at least as far 
back as Apuleius’ Golden Ass (about 160 B.C.). Cambridge-educated Coventry might have well 
been familiar with these and also with medieval literature of the sort, but he was much more likely 
to have read the more recent French and English examples.
8
 %is notwithstanding, Pompey was 
the one which ignited the mid-century boom in novels about non-human subjects or inanimate 
objects and “established it as an autonomous narrative form within Britain” (Bellamy 1998, 119). 
What was regarded as new and innovative, and was indeed distinctively different from historical 
prototypes, was the stress on the satire, using the naïve onlooker to ridicule the chosen target; 
or, as observed by Walter Raleigh, “the novelty […] consisted in the scandal and scurrility that 
[these novels] made it excuse” (1894, 192). As such the device was very convenient for roman à 
clef, “a work of fiction in which actual persons are presented under fictitious names” (Cuddon 
1999, 475), originating in seventeenth-century France and, by the time of ‘our’ book, already 
well established in England. According to Lady Mary, this is obviously the case with Pompey.
9


If the linking device itself already enables the introduction of a variety of topical concerns,
10
 
references to real, usually well-known personages create an even stronger sense of actuality and 
of the present. Pompey the Little abounds with the names of fashionable venues, contemporary 
celebrities and literary characters.
11
 All these references are needed as, according to Ronald 
Paulson, the subject of a satirist is “the microscopic imitation of the topically and immediately 
commonplace” (1967, 22). “%e presentness of the present”; “the language about and of the 
living”, which according to Mikhail Bakhtin represents one of the archetypal traits of the novelistic 
(2004, 15), is enhanced by the endeavour to accompany each episode and each individual profile 
with a characteristic discourse, resulting in an orchestra of voices and creating a vivid acoustic 
portrait of the age. Again, this is something that Lady Mary herself observed, admitting that 
she “fancy’s she heard them [Lady T and Lady O] talk.” %is too contributes to the gossipy 
quality of the narrative. What is more, the panorama of idioms is reinforced by the hybridity of 
genres, creatively intertwined throughout the text. We are offered everything from a sentimental 
romance (Hillario’s duel story) to a theological dispute (on the immortality of the soul); a coffee-
house debate, a moral tale, and much more, resulting in a proper Bakhtinian polyglossia.
12
It is something of a contradiction that despite the hotchpotch of voices, the one of the author 
remains the loudest. In contrast to the majority of non-human heroes, Pompey is not the narrator. 
Consequently we meet with much more direct authorial presence. Even though the author is 
pretending to talk in the name of the dog and remains anonymous, the fact that he does not 
even provide a frame story – which was almost a rule with novels of non-human characters (and 
very common in general) – makes the dog disappear even more into the background, and more 
openly than is usual for this subgenre, suggests that what he is supposedly thinking stands for the 
author’s own commentary.
13
 Scorn against the nouveaux riches, contempt of the luxury of the times 
and critique of the general moral corruption in Pompey the Little thus reveal a great deal about 
conservative views and the general discontent of this young Anglican curate of aristocratic origin.


His pushy and ironic, sometimes even openly manipulative voice, addressing the reader throughout 
the book, according to the opinion of the many, undoubtedly positions Coventry among the 
followers of the so-called Fielding school.
14
 Despite the many similarities
15
 and regardless of 
Coventry’s own acknowledgment of the master,
16
 important differences, however, should not be 
ignored, especially as the two elements essential in Fielding – the complex plot and the heroes of 
flesh and blood – are at least underdeveloped, if not entirely missing from the life of a lapdog. 
Besides, other influences need to be acknowledged, and not only the ones Coventry pointed 
to himself (namely, Pope and Swift); certainly Smollett’s harsh physical comedy (numerous 
scatological motifs appear throughout the book), farcical elements and grotesque episodes with 
caricaturized characters, as used in !e Adventures of Roderick Random (1748). 
But what concerns me more is the not entirely soluble question of the novelistic and the 
canonical. As superficial as this may sound, and despite the many references explicitly referring 
to it as a novel,
17
 the general impression after having read Pompey the Little is not one of a novel. 
We are inclined to think, somewhat teleologically, that novels should have a beginning, a middle 
and an end, a more or less clear storyline, an insight into the private; that they should offer 
the experience of empathy, a portion of psychological intimacy, emotions and some notion of 
individual subjectivity. Pompey hardly brings any of this.
18
 But even if I dare to suggest this is an 
episodic prose fiction rather than a novel, this does not in any way lessen its (socio-)historical 
and cultural value.
 Even though Pompey inspired a whole flood of more and less bizarre chain-stories about non-
human heroes that abounded throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, this distinct 
type of prose fiction was not granted with any particular label
19
 – not until fairly recently, when 
Liz Bellamy in 1988 significantly defined it as ‘the novel of circulation’.
 


%ese were novels, based neither on the adventures of an individual, nor on the 
correspondence of a group of friends, but on the exchange of an inanimate object. %e 
central character – a penny, a bank-note, a dog, a cat, a peg, a hackney carriage or whatever 
– is passed from person to person, sold, exchanged, lost, found, swapped and so on, and 
recounts its adventures, its thoughts, and the characters it encounters in the course of its 
life (1998, 119).
20
 
%e argumentation behind the term was sufficiently persuasive and it was quickly picked up. 
Judging from what has already been said regarding Pompey, the shift in emphasis from who 
the heroes were to what they were doing makes sense indeed. Pompey is certainly primarily 
important in what is happening to him (in what he is ‘doing’ as a device), and not in what he 
is (a dog). As such he is effective even when he is passive. When pointing to another element 
that these characters have in common apart from being non-human or inanimate – namely, the 
fact that they all circulate – what comes into the forefront is the deeper meaning of the device, 
revealing a certain idea and image of the society behind the satirical surface, which ascribes to the 
subgenre a whole new meaning. 
A society represented through the lens of the circulating hero cannot possibly give a sense of a 
safe, unified realm. Featuring people only connected through a narrator in transit, it is depicted 
as fragmented, atomized and alienated. %e fact that the central hero circulates, or is passed 
around randomly, necessarily implies the lack of human interaction: Pompey cannot share his 
experience with the owners, nor can they share theirs among themselves, which inevitably results 
in a lack of sentiments and affective links. In Bellamy’s words: “%e novel of circulation provides 
a paradigm of the alienation” (1998, 120).
Add to this that circulation is primarily associated with currency, notably money, and given the 
fact that the predominant type of the eighteenth-century circulating hero was in fact a piece of 
money (a guinea, a rupee, a shilling, or a banknote),
21
 while many other inanimate objects took 
a form of mere commodities, and the genre reveals itself as being utterly engaged with the idea 
of commerce and exchange as the driving force(s) of the story, as well as of the society at large. 
Unsurprisingly, the anti-commercial rhetoric of T ory tradition, pointing at the “new commercial 
system as a source of social instability and a challenge to the values of the old nobility” (Bellamy 
1998, 124) became characteristic of the subgenre. %is clearly corresponds with Coventry’s 
political beliefs.
It is very easy to accept the new term, the novel of circulation, without further reflection. But 
Bellamy did not only provide a name, she also produced a concept. %erefore, by using the 
label, one inevitably implies a certain understanding of the subgenre. %is necessarily had its 


consequences. %e ensuing discussions
22
 only rarely addressed the question of the genre of these 
narratives (something that still obviously preoccupies Day in his study), and the type of the 
protagonist, too, ceased to raise interest. %ey all, however, saw the circulating hero as emblematic 
of the burgeoning consumer culture. Bellamy’s label, avoiding reference to the protagonist, seems 
to have done away with many contested issues. 
It is useful to check the broader context in which Bellamy carried out the (re)conceptualization 
of the subgenre. Her initial (1988) as well as the ensuing elaborated study (1998) both dealt 
with the larger social issues, the market relations and commerce in particular. %is might well 
account for her ‘slip’ already in the definition itself, perhaps betraying her preoccupation with 
the currency and commodity narrators.
23
 While acknowledging Bellamy’s key contribution to 
the understanding of the long neglected subgenre, and recognizing the significance of the term, 
one should nevertheless remain attentive to its limitations.
 %ere is no denying that Pompey also functions as a commodity, to an extent at least. He 
circulates through society in an arbitrary way, just as money does. It is true that he is not exactly 
being bought and sold, but he is certainly often exchanged (for a golden watch, or a pint of 
porter, for a dram of brandy, for oysters). As such he undoubtedly fits into the concept of the 
novel of circulation. 
But there is more to it than that. Even though Coventry’s lapdog is not a very convincing 
representative of his species, we are nonetheless dealing with a dog. %is invites me to look 
behind the relationship of commodity exchange. Lack of emotions and Pompey’s inertness 
notwithstanding, he nevertheless ‘belongs’ and ‘is owned’. Different from a guinea or a 
pincushion, his (exchange) value does to a degree lie in the affectionate links, regardless of how 
cursory they are. Pompey is not only a commodity; he also functions as a gift and as property. 
%e shifts of his status, of the way he is ‘used’, reveal his position in the relation to the public and 
the private, and indicate the extent of the emotional involvement.
24
 As a commodity he belongs 
to the act of exchange, to the public realm; as a property he is part of the private; but as a gift he 
is somewhat conflating the two notions and pending in-between: while the idea of commodity 
implies multiple, repeated exchange, the gift is defined by a single gift-giving and getting act.
25


%e above sketch brings forth other dimensions of the circulation which go beyond the focus 
on the mere economic relationship and invite a somewhat different sense of eighteenth-
century society. Without impinging on the idea that the subgenre underlines the nature of the 
commercial state, I will try to show that the circulating device also illuminates other, less visible, 
but nonetheless crucial effects of commercialization.
T o that end two crucial long-term effects of the eighteenth-century commercialization boom first 
need to be outlined.
26
 On the one hand, the increased (financial and ‘physical’) availability of goods 
(luxuries, or at least imitations of luxuries) accelerated the already extraordinary upward mobility of 
the English people
27
 and contributed to confusion on the social map. %is made social divisions, 
which had once been much more visible, difficult to discern, producing a need for new orientation 
signals, especially as the side-effects of commercialization also aggravated city anonymity. 
On the other hand, commercialization and industrialization importantly affected the relationship 
between the public and the private. %at eighteenth-century England saw a growing division 
between the two realms has, by now, become “a received wisdom” (Meyer-Spacks 2003, 3). 
Although the theory of separated spheres, notably the extent of the division, has been thoroughly 
contested (see e.g. Vickery 1993, Shoemaker 1998), the general idea of the divide remained 
more or less unchallenged. I cannot afford to reflect on this any further, but suffice it to say that 
the separation of home and workplace, with working men and home-alone wives, substantially 
re-defined gender roles and, alongside this, significantly changed the nature of the public and the 
private themselves. %e two realms transformed in a way which, on the one hand, opened up the 
sphere of pronounced intimate privacy (something which Meyer-Spacks elaborates on (Privacy 
2003)); while on the other, established the specific type of the public, the proto-democratic, state-
concerned public sphere, as it was famously defined by Habermas (!e Structural Transformation 
of the Public Sphere 1962, Eng. transl. 1989). 
What concerns me here, however, is the often neglected, albeit crucial, dimension of the above 
described reformation, namely a large ‘belt’ left in-between, an intermediary space that could 
be described as the sphere of sociability. Because of the enhanced divide between the private 
and the public, sociability, providing the ‘ground’ where the two could be breached, became 
the context of marked importance. Belonging just as much to the private as to the public,
28
 it at 
once exposed and helped to order the confusion. Because it always to some degree classified its 
audience, creating easier discernible micro societies, it provided a context where the signposts 
could successfully operate and where labelling as such was the subject of conversation. It is no 
coincidence that eighteenth-century England was recognized as the ‘age of sociability’.
29


%is is the area where Pompey the Little is predominantly at work. %ere is no trace of the proper 
public sphere there. In fact, it seems the lack of it is deliberately enhanced. By depicting the place 
of the public debate – the coffee-house – as a stage of irascible men feigning knowledge (chapter 
), and not as the one of serious and reasonable conversation, Coventry seems to suggest that 
the public sphere, if it at all exists, is definitely not functioning. %e public in Pompey the Little is 
limited to the (public) sociability, the leisure and pleasure, where the opinion of the aristocratic 
‘world’ is all that counts.
30
 %is is the platform against which the private is measured. 
Alternating between a commodity, a gift and a property, Pompey successfully exposes the gulf 
between the private and the public, alias the sociable. What we are allowed to see by witnessing 
the owners’ behaviour in their individual or family privacies on the one hand, and in the sociable 
context in the other, confirms the deception of appearances.
31
 Another thing which contributes 
to the general impression of hypocrisy is that even when given as a present, Pompey is never 
an honest gift. T o be sure, the recipient might take it as such, but in fact the previous owner 
just wants to get rid of the animal.
32
 Meanwhile, those who really want the dog (Hillario, Lady 
T empest, Aurora), openly ask for it, which does not fit into the concept of a gift either; and 
even in this case Pompey rarely comes gratis.
33
 In revealing the state of things and juxtaposing 
the two sides, Pompey is taking the role of a guide, removing the masks and pointing at the 
contradictions. A legitimate heir of the ‘spies’ in the preceding novels of the similar kind, he takes 
advantage of being allowed to be present where other people cannot be, which makes it easy to 
lay bare the duplicity and fraudulence of almost everybody he encounters. It is very important 
that he can hear the gossip. In fact, the sphere of sociability is manifestly the sphere of gossip. 
 As one of the instruments to find a way around the puzzling social world, gossip gained 
importance in eighteenth-century England. In !e Fall of Public Man Richard Sennett traces 
the meaning of gossiping from the court culture of the middle of the seventeenth to the urban 
society of the mid-eighteenth century (1978, 60−3). While in the former, gossip was understood 
as a legitimate type of public discourse, a way of establishing social contact,
34
 in the latter – in 
a period when “material conditions of life made people appear like unknown quantities to each 
other” (Sennett 1978, 62) – it becomes a privileged source of information, a sign of confidence 
and friendship, more personal and more valuable, but important overall as an aid for locating 
people on the social map. 


What Pompey is doing could in many ways be described as inviting us to participate in gossip. 
%e feeling after reading is indeed one of skimming through a tabloid or glancing at a series of 
snapshots. %e fact that we are dealing with a type of roman à clef certainly contributes to this 
impression. 
%e importance of gossip in Pompey the Little ties in well with the aforementioned role of Pompey as 
a gift and as a commodity. Gossip can well be defined as a type of news, as it certainly “involves an 
exchange of information” (Meyer-Spacks 1985, 21−2). As such, and depending on the context, it 
might operate as either: a gift or a commodity. %is was undoubtedly the case in eighteenth-century 
England. Consider about buying magazines with gossipy sections which multiplied from the mid-
century onwards,
35
 or about paying an entrance fee to be able to catch some gossip at a ridotto. 
Buying roman à clef, or even more importantly, the Key to go with, could also count as gossip 
commodified. But just as well, gossip could have come as a certain kind of gift, creating “a feeling 
bond” (Hyde 1983, 56). Considering that a gift is never just a gift, as it always implies commerce 
in social capital,
36
 which is certainly true of gossip, the notions seem all the more connected. 
%roughout the book, Pompey conveys and incites gossip; he is a subject of gossip and – for the most 
part – witnesses gossiping.
37
 It is only when he becomes a part of the dispute, whereupon his legal 
status is about to be defined, and where he is reclaimed as a property, that the circulation stops and 
the story comes to an end. %e marble monument with an epitaph in his honour, erected in Lady 
T empest’s garden, functions as a badge of ownership. However, it also bears a mark of conspicuous 
consumption – together with property another defining notion of eighteenth-century England.
If Sennett offers historical explanation of the significance of gossip, Patricia Meyer-Spacks (1985) 
explores the uses of gossip as a narrative device. In Pompey the Little gossip is indeed much more 
than just a motif. It assumes many functions. Most explicitly it appears as an action in itself. 
Characters gossip all the time: when Cleora and Cleanthe backbite Hillaro (ch. ) gossip takes 
on a function of confident intimacy; Count Tag’s gossiping about what’s new in high society 
(ch. , part ) provides also an efficient self-portrait. %at Coventry refers to these trifling chit-
chats as ‘conversations’ only enhances their triviality. But gossip also impels plots. Once the 
news about the real Jack-the highwayman is spread, he has to fly Bath (ch. ). Idle talk as it is, 
gossip is nevertheless of consequence. Operating in the transit field of sociability, as “the most 
‘public’ form of a private mode” (Meyer-Spacks 1985, 5), it affects both. When the eminent Bab 
Frightful appears at Mrs. Frippery’s drum, she assures it will be mentioned in the circulating 
gossip of the town. Recognizing references, notably the allusions to real personae, the reader 
receives his or her share of gossip as well. 


%e way characters are introduced also reads as gossip. Each new owner is represented with a 
summary of his or her background history – something which already implies that (s)he could 
not have been leading an exactly exemplary life, as it is usually the numerous (mis)adventures 
that make for someone’s ‘history’.
38
 Neither the ones who gossip, nor the ones gossiped about 
ever appear in a very flattering light. As becomes a satire, Pompey indeed, does not meet many 
of the virtuous kind.
Summing all this up, gossip in Pompey the Little reads as a way of learning and knowing things; 
as a strategy for bringing in the topics, and as such almost represents a micro epistemology in 
itself. Even the concluding thought of the philosophical ‘Dissertation upon Nothing’ – “ex nihil 
omnia fuit” – reads as a kind of gossip motto (1974, 111).
What is most significant in relation to the subgenre in question, however, is the way in which 
non-human characters, by sharing the insight into gossipy secrets, turn the reader into a complicit 
voyeur. %is links well with the observation that circulating heroes tend to be little (Johnston 
2003). As slippers and pins, atoms and fleas, they can peregrinate freely in all the hidden corners 
of every day life and witness the titillating private scenes. Smallness links well with the gossipy 
particulars. It is exactly the smallness in size, duration and value that seems to allow for greater 
perception and offers a certain kind of power (Johnston 2003, 152−4). Not only is Pompey a 
lap-dog; the narrative abounds in detail. Lady Mary could not have made that remark about the 
dress, if this was not the case (see the quote on the first page of this essay).
But the fact that small protagonists circulate or ‘are circulated’ is just as important. %e two 
elements readily connect. It is almost as if a circulating hero could best express himself in the 
form of gossip. %is is what the term ‘novel of circulation’ seems to neglect. 
 %ere is no doubt that Pompey is a ‘circulating’ hero. But tackling ‘his’ story from the perspective 
of the gossipy narrative reveals a more complex picture of the society it satirizes in a manner that 
takes us beyond the term and points at other compatible, but nevertheless importantly different 
characteristics of the subgenre. %e society as portrayed in Pompey the Little certainly is one of 
commodity exchange, but – figuring also as a gift (albeit not for free) and as gossip – Pompey 
enables us to read its characteristics on the level of changed codes of behaviour, revealing a society 
which is just as gossipy as it is commercialized. 
So as it turns out, the dog is nevertheless important. It was the fact that I could not accept 
Pompey as a mere commodity that encouraged me to think what else he is telling the reader 
about how people felt about the world in which they lived. As such he certainly reveals a lot 
– enough to prioritize the socio-historical importance of Pompey the Little over the literary.
39
 


In this context it is well worth mentioning that real, ‘outside’ gossip accompanied the book from 
the start. Soon after being first published anonymously, in February 1751, rumours speculating 
about the author’s identity appeared, with Fielding as the most probable candidate.
40
 Further 
hearsay was triggered by the peculiar, three-part review in the Monthly, with extracts as if by 
incident extending from February to April edition (1751) and thus repeatedly advertising the 
book. Day speculates that this might have been a deliberate token of approbation, a personal 
favour of the editor, Griffiths or Cleland (1974, xii). As behoves a book which makes gossip one 
of its central concerns, Pompey quickly became the talk of the town and attracted a considerable 
amount of attention.
41
 It is not certain whether the Key was ever written, but the characters 
undoubtedly evoked recognition. Lady Mary even recognized herself. Symbolically, her reception 
of the text brings together all the crucial elements I have dealt with: receiving the book as a gift 
and returning a gossipy letter about what she had read, Pompey’s journey comes full circle.
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