Eliza Haywood

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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.
Black and white engraving of Eliza Haywood by George Vertue after a painting by James Parmentier. It has an oval frame tied with a ribbon at the top and set within a rectangular from. Haywood's hair is tied back, with a lock of it showing on her left shoulder. She is wearing a dress with a deep decolletage and lace at the bosom. This engraving was used as frontispiece to vol. i of her "Secret Histories, Novels and Poems", of which the second (and perhaps only) edition appeared in 1725.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Author summary Penelope Aubin
PA began publishing early in the eighteenth century. She is chiefly known for her short novels, though she turned her hand to poetry and comedy as well. At the height of her career her rate...
Literary responses Penelope Aubin
Critic Chris Mounsey thinks this novel too like a Haywood sex-romp for PA to wish to attach her name to it.
Mounsey, Chris. “’ . . . bring her naked from her Bed, that I may ravish her before the Dotard’s face, and then send his Soul to Hell’: Penelope Aubin, Impious Pietist, Humourist or Purveyor of Juvenile Fantasy?”. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol.
26
, No. 1, pp. 55-75.
61
Debbie Welham reads it as a message of encouragement in hard times.
Welham, Debbie. “The Political Afterlife of Resentment in Penelope Aubin’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The Life and Amorous Adventures of Lucinda</span> (1721)”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
20
, No. 1, pp. 49-63.
58
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, Vol.
1
, No. 1, pp. 99-112.
107
Aubin was also, unmistakably, one...
Intertextuality and Influence Aphra Behn
Nancy Copeland has observed in a recent study of Behn, Centlivre , and gender that adaptations of this play, by Eliza Haywood in A Wife to be Lett, 1723, and Hannah Cowley in A...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Mary Matilda Betham
Catharine Macaulay , she insists, was pleasing and delicate in her person, and a woman of great feeling and indisputable abilities, though the democratic spirit of her writings has made them fall into disrepute.
Feminist Companion Archive.
She...
Education Elizabeth Boyd
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...
Textual Features Elizabeth Boyd
EB offers original, discriminating praise for women's writing: Susanna Centlivre (her inspiration, she says), Eliza Haywood (though she regrets her exposure of women's faults), Aphra Behn , and Delarivier Manley , whom she calls the...
Textual Production Elizabeth Boyd
She dedicated it to her patron Lady Hertford . The British Library copy is 12604 ccc. 7. Harvard University holds the only known copy of an undated set of subscription proposals, which is headed Any...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jane Brereton
The book opens, like other posthumous collections, with a biographical memoir, in this case by JB 's daughter Charlotte, who reinforces the poet's own positioning of herself as Welsh, female, and modest. Envisaging potential hostility...
Intertextuality and Influence Frances Brooke
Mary Singleton, supposed author of this paper, with its trenchant comments on society and politics, is an unmarried woman on the verge of fifty,
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
14
good-humoured as well as sharply intelligent: a contribution to the...
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.
229-30
Literary responses Sarah Chapone
SC 's friend and printer Richardson saw her project in a different and far more simple light than she did: as the administering by a good woman of an antidote to the Poison shed by...
Reception Mary Collyer
The pious Duchess of Somerset (formerly Lady Hertford, a respected patron and poet) skimmed this novel as it passed from hand to hand in her circle (at the end of its publication year) but assured...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Selina Davenport
Her father, Captain Charles Granville Wheler , was a great-nephew of Sir George Wheler , a traveller, clergyman, scholar, and early member of the Royal Society , who had a family estate in Kent. (...

Timeline

3 April 1592: The early, anonymous tragedy Arden of Feversham...

Writing climate item

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,...

Writing climate item

1669

G. J. Guilleragues published, anonymously, Lettres portugaises (sometimes called Letters of a Portuguese Nun).

19 May 1720: A New Miscellany, edited by Anthony Hammond,...

Women writers item

19 May 1720

A New Miscellany, edited by Anthony Hammond , included work by Pope , Prior , William Bond , George Sewell , Susanna Centlivre , Delarivier Manley , Eliza Haywood , Martha Fowke , and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .

29 February 1724: Daniel Defoe anonymously published The Fortunate...

Writing climate item

29 February 1724

Daniel Defoe anonymously published The Fortunate Mistress, or . . . Lady Roxana, his second fictional autobiography of a woman living on her wits.

February 1726: Richard Savage published his Miscellaneous...

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February 1726

Richard Savage published his Miscellaneous Poems and Translations: dedicated to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , it included work by Eliza Haywood , Martha Fowke , and Miranda Hill .

December 1728: George II's eldest son, then Frederick Augustus,...

National or international item

December 1728

George II 's eldest son, then Frederick Augustus, Prince of Brunswick-Lunenburg , arrived in England for the first time.

27 April 1736: Frederick Prince of Wales married Princess...

National or international item

27 April 1736

Frederick Prince of Wales married Princess Augusta , who had first met him two days before, when she landed in England.

19 February 1747: Mrs Penelope Pry (possibly though not probably...

Building item

19 February 1747

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,...

National or international item

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 novel...

Writing climate item

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...

National or international item

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...

Writing climate item

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...

Writing climate item

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 musical Hair, a few...

Building item

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.

Texts

Haywood, Eliza. A Letter from H—— G——, Esq. Printed and sold at the Royal Exchange, Temple Bar, Charing Cross, and all the Pamphlet Shops of London and Westminster, 1750.
Haywood, Eliza. A Present for a Servant-Maid. T. Gardner, 1743.
Haywood, Eliza. A Wife to be Lett. D. Browne, Jr. and S. Chapman, 1723.
Haywood, Eliza. Adventures of Eovaai. S. Baker, 1736.
Haywood, Eliza. Anti-Pamela. J. Huggonson, 1741.
Haywood, Eliza. Bath-Intrigues. J. Roberts, 1724.
Haywood, Eliza. Cleomelia. J. Millan, 1727.
Haywood, Eliza. Dalinda. C. Corbett and G. Woodfall, 1749.
Haywood, Eliza. “Elegy on Manley”. The Plain Dealer, edited by Aaron Hill, No. 53, A. Hill and W. Bond.
Haywood, Eliza. Epistles for the Ladies. T. Gardner, 1750.
Haywood, Eliza. Fatal Fondness. J. Walthoe and J. Crokatt, 1725.
Haywood, Eliza. Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburgh. W. Mears and J. Brindley, 1729.
Haywood, Eliza. Idalia. D. Browne, Jr., W. Chetwood, and S. Chapman, 1723.
Haywood, Eliza. “Introduction”. Three Novellas, edited by Earla Wilputte, Colleagues Press, 1995, pp. 1-15.
Haywood, Eliza. “Introduction”. Adventures of Eovaai, edited by Earla Wilputte, Broadview, 1999, pp. 7-40.
Haywood, Eliza. “Introduction and Chronology of Events in Eliza Haywood’s Life”. The Injur’d Husband, or, The Mistaken Resentment; and, Lasselia, or, The Self-Abandon’d, edited by Jerry C. Beasley, University Press of Kentucky, 1999, p. ix - xlii.
Haywood, Eliza. “Irish Artifice”. The Female Dunciad, T. Read, 1728, pp. 17-30.
Gomez, Madeleine Angélique Poisson de. L’Entretien des Beaux Esprits. Translator Haywood, Eliza, F. Cogan and J. Nourse, 1734.
Gomez, Madeleine Angélique Poisson de. La Belle Assemblée. Translator Haywood, Eliza, D. Browne, Jr., and S. Chapman, 1724.
Haywood, Eliza. Lasselia. D. Browne, Jr., and S. Chapman, 1723.
Boursault, Edmé. Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier. Translator Haywood, Eliza, William Chetwood, 1720.
Haywood, Eliza. Life’s Progress Through the Passions. T. Gardner, 1748.
Haywood, Eliza. Life’s Progress Through the Passions. Garland Publishing, 1974, http://HSS.
Haywood, Eliza. Love in Excess. W. Chetwood, 1720.
Haywood, Eliza. Love in Excess. Editor Oakleaf, David, Broadview, 1994.