The volume is divided into three parts exploring formative influences on the eighteenth-century novel, its engagement with the major issues and philosophies of the period, and its lasting legacy. Each of these three parts is structured around the same themes, including globalization, nationhood, technology, commerce, science, and lifestyles. This allows the Companion to capitalize on cutting-edge scholarship without obscuring traditional parameters for the study of the eighteenth-century novel, such as narrative authority, print culture, and the rise of the novel as a pan-European phenomenon.

The Companion as a whole furnishes readers exemplary cultural studies methodology and a sophisticated vision of the eighteenth-century novel in its political, aesthetic, and moral contexts, and keeps them abreast of current critical trends in a field that has changed dramatically over the past decade.