Abstract: While paternal metaphors befit stories of the transmission of literary tradition, fraternal metaphors predominate at times of literary innovation. Through case studies of two sets of triangular literary relations — between Henry and Sarah Fielding and Samuel Richardson, and between William and Dorothy Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge — this chapter argues that both the establishment of the novel as a serious genre and the inauguration of the Romantic revolution were events shaped by relationships combining biological brother-sister relations and literary brotherhood and sisterhood. It contrasts the place accorded the sister in the early novel tradition, as feminine fellow-practitioner and as weapon deployed by rival males, with her place within early Romantic discourse as a link to Nature and a source of matter to be shaped by a masculine poetic spirit.

Keywords: fraternal, brotherhood, rival, innovation, novel, Romantic, brother-sister, Henry Fielding, Sarah Fielding, Samuel Richardson,