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The scribbling dame again used the feigned letter as a vehicle for mildly infamous gossip in "Letters from the Palace of Fame. Written by a First Minister in the Regions of Air, to an Inhabitant of this World. Translated from an Arabian Manuscript." Its pretended source and the sham Oriental disguise make the work an unworthy member of that group of feigned Oriental letters begun by G.P. Marana with "L'Espion turc" in 1684, continued by Dufresny and his imitator, T. Brown, raised to a philosophic level by Addison and Steele, and finally culminant in Montesquieu's "Lettres Persanes" and Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World" . The fourth letter is a well-told Eastern adventure, dealing with the revenge of Forzio who seduces the wife of his enemy, Ben-hamar, through the agency of a Christian slave, but in general the "Letters" are valuable only as they add an atom of evidence to the popularity of pseudo-Oriental material. Eliza Haywood was anxious to give the public what it wanted. She had found a ready market for scandal, and knew that the piquancy of slander was enhanced and the writer protected from disagreeable consequences if her stories were cast in some sort of a disguise. She had already used the obvious ruse of an allegory in the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" and had just completed a feigned history in the "Court of Carimania." The well known "Turkish Spy" and its imitations, or perhaps the recent but untranslated "Lettres Persanes," may have suggested to her the possibility of combining bits of gossip in letters purporting to be translated from the Arabic and written by some supermundane being. The latter part of the device had already been used by Defoe in "The Consolidator." Mrs. Haywood merely added the suggestion of a mysterious Oriental source. She makes no attempt to satirize contemporary society, but is content to retail vague bits of town talk to customers who might be deluded into imagining them of importance. "The new created Vizier," the airy correspondent reports, "might have succeeded better in another Post, than in this, which with so much earnestness he has sollicited. For, notwithstanding the Plaudits he has received from our Princess, and the natural Propensity to State-Affairs, given him by his Saturnine Genius; his Significator Mars promis'd him greater Honours in the Field, than he can possibly attain to in the Cabinet." And so on. Both "Bath-Intrigues" and "Letters from the Palace of Fame" may be classed as romans
The writer of "Bath-Intrigues," moreover, did not hesitate to recommend Eliza's earlier novels to the good graces of scandal-loving readers, for she describes a certain letter as "amorous as Mrs. O F -d's Eyes, or the Writings of the Author of Love in Excess."
Bath-Intrigues was included in Mrs. Haywood's Works, 1727. Another work contained in the same two volumes, The Perplex'd Duchess; or, Treachery Rewarded: Being some Memoirs of the Court of Malfy. In a Letter from a Sicilian Nobleman, who had his Residence there, to his Friend in London , may be a scandal novel, though the title suggests a reworking of Webster's Duchess of Malfi.
A less comprehensive survey of current tittle-tattle, perhaps modeled on Mrs. Manley's "Court Intrigues" , stole forth anonymously on 16 October, 1724, under the caption, "Bath-Intrigues: in four Letters to a Friend in London," a title which sufficiently indicates the nature of the work. Like the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" these letters consist of mere jottings of scandal.
Most probably both productions were from the same pen, though "Bath-Intrigues" has been attributed to Mrs. Manley. Opposite the title-page Roberts, the publisher, advertised "The Masqueraders," "The Fatal Secret," and "The Surprise" as by the same author. One of Mrs.
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