Elizabeth Sarah Gooch
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courtesan autobiography), published poetry, further works which blend autobiography with fiction and essay-type material, and finally to sentimental novels. Self-vindication and the need for money were her chief motives, but she has a real gift for expressing both mood and argument. Reviewers gradually shifted over the course of her career from sympathy to contempt.
's writing career began in the later eighteenth century with a sizeable pamphlet justifying her role in the quarrel with her estranged husband which had landed her in debtors' prison. From this she moved on to further life-writing (
Biography
This by no means exhausts the many combinations of her birth and married names under which
chose to publish.