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Updated: June 4, 2025
The normal character in Eliza Haywood's tales almost invariably conformed to some conventional type borrowed from the romance or the stage. The author's purpose was not to paint a living portrait, but to create a vehicle for the expression of vivid emotion, and in her design she was undoubtedly successful until the reading public was educated to demand better things.
"That is all very well so far as it goes, but we simply go to these dinners because you are the family lawyer and I am your wife." "Well, well, you know, Eliza, that I was in treaty for the Haywood's Estate when that confounded mine that I had invested in went wrong, and fifteen thousand were lost at a blow a nice kettle of fish we made between us of that." "We," she repeated, scornfully.
Haywood's novels are more entirely moral or more essentially dull. Though the scene of "The Rash Resolve: or, the Untimely Discovery" is laid in Porto Rico and in Spain, the romancer took little advantage of her opportunity to introduce the usual "cloak and sword" incidents of Spanish fiction.
Gosse conjectures, they were read chiefly by milliners and other women on the verge of literacy. But though persons of solid education avoided reading novels and eastern tales as they might the drinking of drams, it is certain that no one of scanty means could have afforded Mrs. Haywood's slender octavos at the price of one to three shillings. Doubtless Mrs.
Haywood's earlier fictions, "The Agreeable Caledonian," had previously been used as the basis of a revision entitled "Clementina" . The reviewer of "Leonora" in the "Critical," though aware of the novel's shortcomings, still laments the passing of "the author of Betsy Thoughtless, our first guide in these delusive walks of fiction and fancy."
Apparently sincere, too, though addressed to a wealthy widow, was the tribute to Lady Elizabeth Germain prefixed to "The Fruitless Enquiry"; and at least one other of Mrs. Haywood's productions is known to have been in Lady Betty's library. But these instances are decidedly exceptional. Usually the needy novelist's dedications were made up of servile adulation and barefaced begging.
Haywood's legitimate novels, suggests the possibility that even the reviewers were ignorant of the authorship of "The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy" and "The Invisible Spy" . Twenty years later, in fact, a writer in the "Critical Review" used the masculine pronoun to refer to the author of "Betsy Thoughtless." It is quite certain that Mrs.
The sweets of love were perhaps most convincingly revealed in the amorous billets of which "Love in Excess" and many of Eliza's subsequent pieces of fiction contained a plentiful supply. Writing them was evidently the author's forte, and perusing them apparently a pleasure to her readers, for they remained a conspicuous part of Mrs. Haywood's sentimental paraphernalia.
Haywood's novels, The City Jilt, was ever issued in cheap form. T. Bailey, the printer, evidently combined his printing business with the selling of patent medicines. The latter may be read in Savage's Poems, Cooke's edition, II, 162. The complimentary verses first printed before the original issue. His poem To Mrs.
Haywood's romances-in-little lay, however, in a romantic over-refinement of the passions rather than in a too vigorous animalism. Full of the most delicate scruples is "The Surprise: or, Constancy Rewarded" , appropriately dedicated to the Sir Galahad of comedy, Sir Richard Steele.
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