The Exeter Eighteenth-Century Narrative Research Consortium (C18 NRC) was launched at the international "Eighteenth-Century Narratives" Symposium in July 2004. In April 2007, the Narrative Project hosted "Narrating the Eighteenth Century"--an interdisciplinary and international conference. The Narrative Project aims to provide a focus for research activities and publications centred on the cultural phenomenon of eighteenth-century narrative. The period that saw the dawn and daybreak of the novel also witnessed the exponential development of a market for print culture, the inauguration of women’s literary tradition, the rapid exploration and exploitation of colonies, the explosion of unregulated capitalism, the seeding of industrialisation, the development of striking new architectural forms, and the triumph of materialist philosophy central to enlightenment. Eighteenth-century narrative forms embody these developments and encode the construction of modern subjectivity.