The orphan is ubiquitous in fiction yet a long-neglected figure in criticism. Filling this critical gap, The Orphan in Eighteenth-Century Fiction crystallizes three pivotal types of orphan in the long eighteenth century: the foundling, the heiress and the dispossessed child. Using a psychoanalytic approach, this book examines the orphan's changing role in the cultural imaginary of the age as well its relationship to the novel and the middle-class subject. Far from being a stock character, the orphan is a nuanced figure which enables a subtle understanding of the social anxieties of the period. This theoretically informed book highlights the key role the orphan figure plays in the construction of gendered subjectivity. Containing in-depth analyses of sixteen major novels from Defoe to Austen, this study is an essential guide to the prehistory of the orphan figure before the canonical novels of the Victorian period.