Sarah Green

Besides a conduct book, a translation, and a pamphlet, SG wrote most fictional forms available to her: novels in several modes, stories, romances, and most notably mock-romances. She was one of the ten most prolific novelists of 1800-19 (and not all of her nearly twenty titles are discussed here). Like Jane Austen , another mocker of the conventions of women's fiction, she was steeped in the writers she laughed at. Her opinions are strictly conservative; yet she ranges freely in subject-matter, creates lively and spirited heroines, and leavens the weight of moral judgement with the play of irony. Her career spanned the years 1790-1825, and she clearly took it seriously. She began putting her name on title-pages in about 1810.