Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Eliza Haywood
-
Standard Name: Haywood, Eliza
Birth Name: Elizabeth Fowler
Married Name: Eliza Haywood
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Pseudonym: Mira
Pseudonym: Euphrosine
Pseudonym: The Authors of the Female Spectator
Pseudonym: The Author of the Fortunate Foundlings
Pseudonym: Exploralibus
Pseudonym: The Son of a Mandarin, residing in London
EH
was the most prolific novelist by number of titles (even ignoring those doubtfully ascribed) between Aphra Behn
and Charlotte Smith
. She also wrote poems, plays, periodicals, conduct books, translation, and theatre history. Her output of 72 works and four collections (actual or planned) skews all graphs of the rising output of published works by women. Some readers find the endless, breathless sex scenes of her earlier fiction tedious; but behind the sensationalism is a sharp mind. She is hilariously satirical, pointedly topical, formally inventive and experimental, and trenchantly critical of power misused (in both political and gender relations). Her career shows a certain direction as well as a constant opportunism. The varied origins of the novel gave her scope for original hybridizations of the pliable new form. Her Betsy Thoughtless first brought to the post-Richardsonian novel a female viewpoint unmonitored by male mentors. Her Female Spectator was the first woman's work in the new magazine genre.
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EB
says nothing about how she learned the things she knew—an acquaintance with English literature, some history, and at least a smattering of French and Latin—but she may well have been largely self-taught. She often...
Family and Intimate relationships
William Congreve
Congreve's daughter therefore grew up with the name and identity of Mary Godolphin
, from her supposed and legal father. (Henrietta's title, held in her own right of descent from her famous father, was not...
This most sensational trial of the mid-century was reported in detail by the Gentleman's Magazine the following year, and used in more or less avowed fictions by Eliza Haywood
in Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young...
Family and Intimate relationships
Dorothea Du Bois
DDB
's family was, it appears, distantly related to that of Eliza Haywood
.
Spedding, Patrick. A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood. Pickering and Chatto, 2003.
She formed close links with a group of male poets who held opposition political views: James Thomson
, Aaron Hill
(who was corresponding with her by June 1721), Richard Savage
(with whom she was exchanging...
Friends, Associates
Susanna Centlivre
In the 1720s she belonged to an informal literary club which included Anthony Hammond
(with whom she was supposed to have had her most youthful liaison), Ambrose Philips
, Martha Fowke
, and Eliza Haywood
.
Bowyer, John Wilson. The Celebrated Mrs Centlivre. Duke University Press, 1952.
229-30
Friends, Associates
Alexander Pope
Pope's relationships with women, particularly women who wrote, tended to be complicated and turbulent. They have been ably studied by scholar Valerie Rumbold
. Contrary to rumour, he apparently liked and respected Anne Finch
...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Hutton
Jane Oakwood says (presumably standing in for her author, as she often does) that in youth she was accused of imitating Juliet, Lady Catesby (Frances Brooke
's translation from Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni
).
The title-page bears a quotation from Prior
's verse romance Henry and Emma, but SS
lays explicit claim, too, to a canonical tradition of prose fiction. The book begins with a series of tales...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Lennox
The novel's opening is an early example of a technique which was to remain popular with authors for generations: About the middle of July 17 — . . . , where the precise day and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Violet Trefusis
This work clearly follows in the tradition of the erotic, oriental, satirical novel Le Sopha, 1742, by the younger Crébillon
.
Le Sopha was translated into English in the year of original publication by...
Intertextuality and Influence
Penelope Aubin
The moral aims of PA
's fiction are clear enough; critic Sarah Prescott
, however, suggests that morality may have been less an impulse than a stock in trade.
Prescott, Sarah. “Penelope Aubin and The Doctrine of Morality: a reassessment of the pious woman novelist”. Women’s Writing, No. 1, pp. 99 - 112.
107
Aubin was also, unmistakably, one...
Intertextuality and Influence
Delarivier Manley
The feminist revenge fantasy in The Wife's Resentment, of a woman executing rough justice on her upper-class betrayer, was tamed and sentimentalised by successors who included Eliza Haywood
.
Donovan, Josephine. “From Avenger to Victim: Genealogy of a Renaissance Novella”. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, No. 2, pp. 269 - 88.
280
Timeline
3 April 1592
The early, anonymous tragedyArden of Feversham was entered in the Stationers' Register
; the title character is murdered by his adulterous wife.
1669
G. J. Guilleragues
published, anonymously, Lettres portugaises (sometimes called Letters of a Portuguese Nun).
Mrs Penelope Pry (possibly though not probably Eliza Haywood
) edited the only surviving issue of The Lady's Weekly Magazine, published in London.
1 January 1753
According to her own story, Elizabeth Canning
, a maidservant, was abducted, after which she was imprisoned for days.
1754
The Rev. William Dodd
published his novelThe Sisters; or, The History of Lucy and Caroline Sanson, Entrusted to a False Friend, a morally oversimplified example of the bad-sister-damned/good-sister-saved plot.
1 November 1755
A major earthquake at Lisbon in Portugal killed more than 10,000 people (estimates vary), provoking theological debate between Rousseau
and Voltaire
about the nature of evil.
1780
James Harrison
(hitherto chiefly known as a music publisher) began to issue the handsomely-produced Novelists' Magazine, a weekly serial reprinting of canonical novels.
1814
John Colin Dunlop
published The History of Fiction: Being a Critical Account of the Most Celebrated Prose Works of Fiction, from the Earliest Greek Romances to the Novels of the Present Age.
27 September 1968
The tribal love-rock musicalHair, a few months into its four-year run on Broadway, opened in London the day after censorship was ended by the Theatres Act.
