Elizabeth Hervey

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Standard Name: Hervey, Elizabeth,, 1748 - 1820
Birth Name: Elizabeth Marsh
Pseudonym: The Author of Melissa and Marcia
Married Name: Elizabeth Harvie
Elizabeth Hervey was the author of six novels published between 1788 and 1814, besides one more, extant in a carefully-bound manuscript, which never reached print. They have something in them of sentiment and something of satire; one has links with the Irish nationalist movement. Her reputation has been overshadowed by her half-brother William Beckford 's two spoofs on the popular novel, which are far less directly connected with her writing than has been supposed.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships William Beckford
The novelist Elizabeth Hervey , whose writing WB apparently scorned, was his legitimate elder half-sister, his mother's daughter by a previous marriage.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
under Beckford the elder
Textual Production Elizabeth Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
OCLC records that the catalogue of the library at the University of Cincinnatti ascribes to Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire (wrongly) a reprint of Elizabeth Hervey 's The Mourtray Family. A Novel (which appeared in January...
Textual Production Jane West
JW has had ascribed to her Elizabeth Hervey 's The History of Ned Evans, 1796, and The Church of St Siffrid, 1797.
Garside, Peter, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling, editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000.
1: 678
Thame, David. “Cooking up a Story: Jane West, Prudentia Homespun, and the Consumption of Fiction”. Eighteenth-Century Fiction, No. 2, pp. 217 - 42.
232n48
The Miss West who published The Two Marillos...

Timeline

After 31 March 1796
William Beckford burlesqued women writers and attacked reactionary government in his novelModern Novel Writing, or the Elegant Enthusiast; and Interesting Emotions of Arabella Bloomville. A Rhapsodical Romance; Interspersed with Poetry, published as Lady Harriet Marlow.
By 22 July 1797
William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.