Eliza Haywood born Elizabeth Fowler, was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, actress and publisher. Since the 1980s, Eliza Haywood’s literary works have been gaining in recognition and interest. Described as “prolific even by the standards of a prolific age” (Blouch, intro 7), Haywood wrote and published over seventy works during her lifetime including fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

, drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

, translations

Translations

Translations is a three-act play by Irish playwright Brian Friel written in 1980. It is set in Baile Beag , a small village at the heart of 19th century agricultural Ireland...

, poetry

Poetry

Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood is a significant figure of the 18th century as one of the important founders of the novel in English. Today she is studied primarily as a novelist.

Biography

Haywood gave conflicting accounts of her own life; her origins remain unclear and there are presently contending versions of her biography. For example, it was once mistakenly believed that she married the Rev. Valentine Haywood.

Some details have been widely accepted however: She was probably born in Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

, England. Her first entry into the public record is in Dublin, Ireland, in 1715 when she was listed as "Mrs. Haywood" in Thomas Shadwell

Thomas Shadwell

Thomas Shadwell was an English poet and playwright who was appointed poet laureate in 1689.-Life:Shadwell was born at Stanton Hall, Norfolk, and educated at Bury St Edmunds School, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1656. He left the university without a degree, and...

's Shakespeare adaptation, Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens

The Life of Timon of Athens is a play by William Shakespeare about the fortunes of an Athenian named Timon , generally regarded as one of his most obscure and difficult works...

; or, The Man-Hater at Smock Alley Theatre. She had an open live-in relationship with William Hatchett, the father of her second child. She also had a child with Richard Savage

Richard Savage

Richard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets....

.

William Hatchett was a bookseller who shared a stage career with Haywood, and the couple were lovers and companions for more than twenty years. They collaborated on an adaptation of Tragedy of Tragedies by Fielding and an opera, The Opera of Operas; or, Tom Thumb the Great (1733).

Haywood’s writing career began in 1719 with the first two installments of Love in Excess, a novel, and ended in the year she died with conduct books The Wife and The Husband, and the biweekly periodical The Young Lady. She wrote in several genres and many of her works were published anonymously. There is much of Haywood’s writing career that still remains unknown.

She fell ill in October 1755 and died on 25 February 1756. She was buried in Westminster

Westminster

Westminster is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, southwest of the City of London and southwest of Charing Cross...

. For unknown reasons, her burial was delayed by about a week and her death duties remain unpaid.

Fiction

Haywood, Delarivier Manley

Delarivier Manley

Delarivier Manley was an English novelist of amatory fiction, playwright, and political pamphleteer...

 and Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers. Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature.-Early life:...

 were known as the Fair Triumvirate of Wit and are considered the most prominent writers of amatory fiction. Eliza Haywood’s prolific fiction develops from titillating romance novels and amatory fiction

Amatory fiction

Amatory fiction is a genre of British literature popular during the late 17th century and 18th century. Amatory fiction predates, and in some ways predicts, the invention of the novel. Amatory fiction was written by women and for women. As its name implies, amatory fiction is preoccupied with...

 during the early 1720s to works focused more on “women's rights and position” (Schofield, Haywood 63) in the later 1720s into the 1730s. In the middle novels of her career, women were locked up, tormented and beleaguered by domineering men. In the later novels of the 1740s and 1750s however, marriage was viewed as a positive situation between men and women.

Due to the economy of publishing in the 18th century, her novels often ran to multiple volumes. Authors were paid only once for a book and received no royalties

Royalties

Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...

; a second volume meant a second payment.

Haywood’s first novel, Love in Excess or The Fatal Enquiry (1719–1720) touches on themes of education and marriage. Termed an amatory

Amatory fiction

Amatory fiction is a genre of British literature popular during the late 17th century and 18th century. Amatory fiction predates, and in some ways predicts, the invention of the novel. Amatory fiction was written by women and for women. As its name implies, amatory fiction is preoccupied with...

 bodice-ripper by some, this novel is also notable for its treatment of the fallen woman. D’Elmonte, the novel's male protagonist

Protagonist

A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

, reassures one woman that she should not condemn herself: “There are times, madam”, he says “in which the wisest have not power over their own actions.” The fallen woman is given an unusually positive portrait.

Idalia; or The Unfortunate Mistress (1723) is divided into three parts. In the first, Idalia is presented as a young motherless, spoiled, and wonderful Venetian aristocrat whose varied amorous adventures are to carry her over most of Italy. Already in Venice she is sought by countless suitors, among them the base Florez, whom her father forbids the house.

One suitor, who is Florez’s friend, Don Ferdinand, resigns his suit, but Idalia’s vanity is piqued at the loss of an even a single adorer, and more from perverseness than from love she continues to correspond with him. She meets him, and he eventually effects her ruin. His beloved friend, Henriquez conducts her to Padua, but becomes the victim of her charms; he quarrels with Ferdinand, and they eventually kill each other in a duel.
In the second part, Henriquez’ brother, Myrtano, succeeds as Idalia’s principal adorer, and she reciprocates his love. She then receives a letter informing her about Myrtano’s engagement to another woman, so she leaves for Verona, hoping to enter a convent. On the road her guide takes her to a rural retreat with the intention of killing, but she escapes to Ancona from where she takes ship for Naples.

The sea captain pays her crude court, but just in time to save her from his embraces the ship is captured by corsairs commanded by a young married couple. Though the heroine is in peasant dress, she is treated with distinction by her captors. Her history moves them to tears and they in turn are in the midst of relating to Idalia the involved story of their courtship when the vessel is wrecked in a gale.

In the third part, we find Idalia borne ashore on a plank; succoured by cottagers she continues her journey towards Rome in a man’s clothes. On the way robbers beat her and leave her for dead but. She is found and taken home by a lady, Antonia, who falls in love with her. Idalia later discovers that Antonia’s husband is her dear Myrtano, but overcome by remorse, dies by the same knife. Their happiness is interrupted by the jealousy of his wife, who first tries to poison everyone and after appeals to the Pope to separate them. Idalia is taken to Rome first in a convent where she leads a miserable life, persecuted by all the young gallants of the city. Then one day she sees Florez, the first cause of her misfortunes. With thoughts of revenge, she sends him a billet, but Myrtano, keeps the appointment instead of Florez. Not recognising her lover, muffled in a cloak, Idalia stabs him, and then dies by the same knife.

Fantomina; or Love in a Maze

Fantomina

Fantomina; or Love in a Maze is a novel by Eliza Haywood published in 1725. In it, the protagonist disguises herself as four different women in her efforts to seduce the man she loves...

 (1724) is a short story about a woman who assumes the roles of a prostitute, a maid, a widow, and a Lady in order to repeatedly seduce a man named Beauplaisir. Schofield points out that, “Not only does she satisfy her own sexual inclinations, she smugly believes that ‘while he thinks to fool me, [he] is himself the only beguiled Person’” (50). This novel asserts that women have some access to power in the social sphere, one of the recurring themes in Haywood’s work. It has been argued that it is indebted to the interpolated tale of the "Invisible Mistress" in Paul Scarron

Paul Scarron

Paul Scarron was a French poet, dramatist, and novelist. His precise birthdate is unknown, but he was baptized on July 4, 1610...

's Roman Comique.

The Adventures of Eovaii: A Pre-Adamitical History (1736) was also titled The Unfortunate Princess (1741). It is a satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, told through a sort of oriental fairy tale.

The Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d Innocence Detected

The Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d Innocence Detected

The Anti-Pamela; or Feign'd Innocence Detected is a 1741 novel written by Eliza Haywood as a satire of the 1740 novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson.- Overview :...

 (1741) is a satirical

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 response to Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...

’s didactic novel Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). It makes fun of the idea of bargaining one’s maidenhead for a place in society. Contemporary writer Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....

 also responded to Pamela with An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, or Shamela, as it is more commonly known, is a satirical novel written by Henry Fielding and first published in April 1741 under the name of Mr. Conny Keyber. Fielding never owned to writing the work, but it is widely considered to be his...

 (1741).

The Fortunate Foundlings (1744) is a picaresque novel

Picaresque novel

The picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society...

 in which two children of opposite sex experience the world differently, according to their gender.

The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751) is a sophisticated, multi-plot novel that has been deemed the first novel of female development in English. Betsy leaves her emotionally and financially abusive husband Munden and experiences independence for a time before she decides to marry again. Written a few years before her marriage conduct books were published, the novel contains advice on marriage in the form of quips from Lady Trusty. Her “patriarchal conduct-book advice to Betsy is often read literally as Haywood's new advice for her female audience. However, Haywood's audience consisted of both men and women, and Lady Trusty's bridal admonitions, the most conservative and patriarchal words of advice in the novel, are contradictory and impossible for any woman to execute completely” (Stuart).

Betsy Thoughtless represents an important change in the 18th century novel. It portrays a mistaken but intelligent and strong-willed woman who gives way to society’s pressures toward marriage. According to Backsheider, Betsy Thoughtless is a novel of marriage, rather than the more popular novel of courtship and thus foreshadows the type of domestic novel that would culminate in the 19th century such as Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...

’s Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published in London, England, in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. with the title Jane Eyre. An Autobiography under the pen name "Currer Bell." The first American edition was released the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York...

. Instead of concerning itself with attracting a partner well, Betsy Thoughtless is concerned with marrying well, and its heroine learns that giving way to the role of women in marriage can be fulfilling.

Haywood’s fiction also includes:

• The British Recluse (collected edition 1724)
• The Injur’d Husband
• Idalia; or The Unfortunate Mistress (1723)
• Lasselia; or The Self-Abandon’d
• The Rash Resove; or, The Untimely Discovery (1723)
• Secret Histories, Novels, and Poems (4 volumes, 1724)
• The Masqueraders; or Fatal Curiosity (1724-5)
• The Fatal Secret; or, Constancy in Distress (1724)
• The Surprise (1724)
• The Arragonian Queen: A Secret History (1724)
• The City Jilt; or, The Alderman Turn’d Beau (1726)
• The Force of Nature; or, The Lucky Disappointment (1724)
• Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia (1725)
• Bath Intrigues: in four Letters to a Friend in London (1725)
• Memoirs of the Baron de Brosse (1724)
• The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Carimania (1726)
• Letters from the Palace of Fame (1727)
• The Unequal Conflict (1725)
• The Fatal Fondness (1725)
• The Mercenary Lover; or, the Unfortunate Heiresses (1726)
• The Double Marriage; or, The Fatal Release (1726)
• The Distressed Orphan; or, Love in a Madhouse (1726)
• Cleomelia; or The Generous Mistress (1727)
• The Fruitless Enquiry (1727)
• The Life of Madam de Villesache (1727)
• Philadore and Placentia (1727)
• The Perplex’d Dutchess; or Treachery Rewarded (1728)
• The Padlock; or No Guard Without Virtue (1728)
• Irish Artifice; or, The History of Clarina (1728)
• Persecuted Virtue; or, The Cruel Lover (1728)
• The Agreeable Caledonian; or, Memoirs of Signiora di Morella (1728)
• The Fair Hebrew; or, A True, but Secret History of Two Jewish Ladies (1729)
• Life’s Progress through the Passions; or, The Adventures of Natura (1748)
• Dalinda; or The Double Marriage (1749)
• A Letter from H------ G--------, Esq., One of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber of the Young Chevalier (1750).
• The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (1753)
• The Invisible Spy (1754)

The Most detailed and up-to-date bibliography available is Patrick Spedding, A Bibliography of Eliza Haywood. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2004.

Acting and drama

Haywood began her acting career in 1715 in Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. By 1717, she had moved to Lincoln's Inn Fields

Lincoln's Inn Fields

Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London, UK. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in developing London", as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner observes...

, where she worked for John Rich

John Rich (producer)

John Rich was an important director and theatre manager in 18th century London. He opened the New Theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields and then the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and began putting on ever more lavish productions...

. Rich had her rewrite a play called The Fair Captive. The play only ran for three nights (to the author's benefit), but Rich added a fourth night as a benefit for the second author, Haywood. In 1723, her first play, A Wife to be Lett, was staged.

During the second half of the 1720s, Haywood continued acting, and she moved over to the Haymarket Theatre

Haymarket Theatre

The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...

 to join with Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....

 in the opposition plays of the 1730s. In 1729, she wrote Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburgh to honor the future George II of the United Kingdom. George II, as Prince of Wales

Prince of Wales

Prince of Wales is a title traditionally granted to the heir apparent to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the 15 other independent Commonwealth realms...

, was a locus for Tory opposition to the ministry of Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....

. As he had made it clear that he did not favor his father's policies or ministry, praise for him was demurral from the present king. Others, such as James Thomson and Henry Brooke, were also writing such "patriotic" (which is to say in support of the Patriot Whigs

Patriot Whigs

The Patriot Whigs and, later Patriot Party, was a group within the Whig party in Great Britain from 1725 to 1803. The group was formed in opposition to the ministry of Robert Walpole in the House of Commons in 1725, when William Pulteney and seventeen other Whigs joined with the Tory party in...

) plays at the time, and Henry Carey

Henry Carey (writer)

Henry Carey was an English poet, dramatist and song-writer. He is remembered as an anti-Walpolean satirist and also as a patriot. Several of his melodies continue to be sung today, and he was widely praised in the generation after his death...

 was soon to satirize the failed promise of George II.

Haywood's greatest success at Haymarket came with The Opera of Operas, an operatic adaptation of Fielding's Tragedy of Tragedies (with music by J. F. Lampe and Thomas Arne) in 1733. However, it was an adaptation with a distinct difference. Caroline of Ansbach

Caroline of Ansbach

Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach was the queen consort of King George II of Great Britain.Her father, John Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, was the ruler of a small German state...

 had affected a reconciliation between George I and George II, and this meant an endorsement by George II of the Whig

British Whig Party

The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...

 ministry. Haywood's adaptation contains a reconciliation scene, replete with symbols from Caroline's own grotto. This was an enunciation of a change by Haywood herself away from any Tory, or anti-Walpolean, causes that she had supported previously, and it did not go unnoticed by her contemporaries.

In 1735, she wrote a one-volume Companion to the Theatre. This book contains plot summaries of contemporary plays, literary criticism

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

, and dramaturgical

Dramaturgy

Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three. Some dramatists combine writing and...

 observations. In 1747 she added a second volume.

After the Licensing Act of 1737

Licensing Act 1737

The Licensing Act or Theatrical Licensing Act of 21 June 1737 was a landmark act of censorship of the British stage and one of the most determining factors in the development of Augustan drama...

, the playhouse was shut against adventurous new plays.

Periodicals and non-fiction

While she was writing popular novels, Eliza Haywood was also working on periodicals, essays and manuals on social behaviour (conduct books). The Female Spectator (4 volumes, 1744–46), a monthly periodical, was written in answer to the contemporary journal The Spectator

The Spectator (1711)

The Spectator was a daily publication of 1711–12, founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in England after they met at Charterhouse School. Eustace Budgell, a cousin of Addison's, also contributed to the publication. Each 'paper', or 'number', was approximately 2,500 words long, and the...

 by Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison

Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...

 and Richard Steele

Richard Steele

Sir Richard Steele was an Irish writer and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator....

. In The Female Spectator, Haywood wrote in four personas (Mira, Euphrosine, Widow of Quality and The Female Spectator) and took positions on public issues such as marriage, children, reading, education and conduct. It was the first periodical written for women by a woman and arguably one of Haywood’s most significant contributions to women's writing. Haywood followed a lead by contemporary John Dunton

John Dunton

John Dunton was an English bookseller and author. In 1691, he founded an Athenian Society to publish The Athenian Mercury, the first major popular periodical and first miscellaneous periodical in England.-Early life:...

 who issued the Ladies’ Mercury as a companion to his successful Athenian Mercury. Even though The Ladies' Mercury was a self-proclaimed women’s journal, it was produced by men (Spacks xii).

The Parrot (1746) apparently earned her questions from the government for political statements about Charles Edward Stuart

Charles Edward Stuart

Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of Great Britain , and Ireland...

.

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1725) is termed a “hybrid" work by Schofield (103); being a work of non-fiction but making use of narrative techniques.
Reflections on the Various Effects of Love (1726) is a didactic account of what can happen to a woman when she gives in to her passions. This piece demonstrates the sexual double standard

Double standard

A double standard is the unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations. The concept implies that a single set of principles encompassing all situations is the desirable ideal. The term has been used in print since at least 1895...

 that allow men to love freely without social consequence and women to be scandalized for doing the same.

The Wife and The Husband (1756) are conduct books for each partner in a marriage. The Wife was first published anonymously (by Mira, one of Haywood's personas from The Female Spectator); The Husband: in Answer to The Wife followed later the same year with Haywood’s name attached.

Haywood also worked on sensational pamphlets on the famous contemporary deaf-mute prophet, Duncan Campbell

Duncan Campbell (soothsayer)

-Life:The account of Campbell's early life, brought up in Lapland where his Scottish father had wed a local woman, has been questioned. He had some teaching at the University of Glasgow, according to the recommendations of John Wallis....

. These include A Spy Upon the Conjurer (1724) and The Dumb Projector: Being a Surprising Account of a Trip to Holland Made by Duncan Campbell (1725).

Political writings

Eliza Haywood was active in politics during her entire career, although she had a party change around the time of the reconciliation of George II with Robert Walpole. She wrote a series of parallel histories, beginning with 1724's Memoirs of a Certain Island, Adjacent to Utopia, and then The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania in 1727. In 1746 her started another journal, The Parrot, which got her questioned by the government for political statements about Charles Edward Stuart

Charles Edward Stuart

Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of Great Britain , and Ireland...

, as she was writing just after the Jacobite Rising

Jacobite rising

The Jacobite Risings were a series of uprisings, rebellions, and wars in Great Britain and Ireland occurring between 1688 and 1746. The uprisings were aimed at returning James VII of Scotland and II of England, and later his descendants of the House of Stuart, to the throne after he was deposed by...

. This would happen again with the publication of A Letter from H-- G----g, Esq. in 1750. She grew more directly political with The Invisible Spy in 1755 and The Wife in 1756.

Haywood’s other works of non-fiction include:

Love-Letters on All Occasions Lately Passed between Persons of Distinction (1730).
A Present for a Servant Maid ; or, the Sure Means of Gaining Love and Esteem (1743).
[A revision.] A New Present for A Servant-Maid: containing Rules for her Moral Conduct, both with respect to Herself and her Superiors: The Whole Art of Cookery, Pickling, and Preserving, &c, &c. and every other Direction necessary to be known to render her a Complete, Useful and Valuable Servant. (in TEN BOOKS): G. Pearch, &c. 1771.
Epistles for the Ladies (1749).

Translations

Haywood published eight translations of popular continental romances (Schofield). They include: Letters from a Lady of Quality (1721); La Belle Assemblée (1724) (translation of Madame de Gomez’s novella); The Lady’s Philosopher's Stone (1723) (translation of Louis Adrien Duperron de Castera’s historical novel); Love in its Variety (translation of Matteo Bandello’s stories); The Disguis'd Prince (1728) (translation of Madame de Villedieu’s 1679 novel); The Busy-Body (1741, 42) (translation of de Mouhy's novel); and The Virtuous Villager (1742) (translation of Charles de Fieux's work).

Critical reception

Haywood is notable as a transgressive, outspoken writer of amatory fiction

Amatory fiction

Amatory fiction is a genre of British literature popular during the late 17th century and 18th century. Amatory fiction predates, and in some ways predicts, the invention of the novel. Amatory fiction was written by women and for women. As its name implies, amatory fiction is preoccupied with...

, plays, romance and novels. Paula R. Backscheider claims that “Haywood's place in literary history is equally remarkable and as neglected, misunderstood, and misrepresented as her oeuvre” (xiii intro drama). For quite some time Eliza Haywood was most frequently noted for her appearance in Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

's The Dunciad

The Dunciad

The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version was published in 1728 anonymously. The second version, the Dunciad Variorum was published anonymously in 1729. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a...

 rather than for her own literary merits. Even though Alexander Pope made her a centerpoint in the heroic games of The Dunciad in Book II—she is, in Pope's view, "vacuous"--he does not dismiss her for being a woman, but for having nothing of her own to say. Pope attacks her for politics and for, implicitly, plagiarism

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

. Unlike other "dunces", however, Pope's characterization does not seem to have been the cause of her obscurity. Rather, as literary historians came to praise and value the masculine novel and, most importantly, to dismiss the courtship novel and to exclude novels of eroticism, Haywood's works were rejected for more chaste or more overtly philosophical works.

In The Dunciad, the book sellers race each other to reach Eliza, and their reward will be all of her books and her company. She is for sale, in other words, in literature and society, in Pope's view. As with other "dunces", she was not without complicity in the attack. Haywood had begun to make it known that she was poor and in need of funds, and she seemed to be writing for pay and to please the undiscerning public.

Eliza Haywood is now regarded as "a case study in the politics of literary history" (Backscheider 100). She is also being reevaluated by feminist

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 scholars and rated very highly. Interest in Haywood’s work has been growing since the 1980s. Her novels are regarded as stylistically innovative. Her plays and political writing attracted most of the attention in her own time, and she was a full player in the difficult public sphere.

Her novels, voluminous and frequent, are now regarded as stylistically innovative and important transitions from the erotic seduction novels and poetry of Aphra Behn (particularly Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister

Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister

Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister by Aphra Behn is a three volume roman à clef playing with events of the Monmouth Rebellion and exploring the genre of the epistolary novel...

 (1684)) and the straightforward, plainly spoken novel of Frances Burney. In her own day, her plays and political writing attracted the most comment and attention, and thus she was a full player in the difficult public sphere, but today her novels carry the most interest and demonstrate the most significant innovation.

Mary Anne Schofield's biography Eliza Haywood (1985) as well as Christine Blouch's article “The Romance of Obscurity” (1991) remain the most comprehensive resources on Haywood's background.

Works by Haywood

• The Female Spectator (4 vols., 1744-1746). 5th ed., v.3 (London: 1755); 7th ed. (London: 1771)

See also

• List of early-modern women playwrights (UK)
• List of early-modern women poets (UK)

External links

• Eliza Haywood Criticism, Texts and E-texts
• Essays by Eliza Haywood at Quotidiana.org
• E-text of Fantomina, or, Love in a Maze
• E-text of Idalia, or, the Unfortunate Mistress
• E-text of The Fatal Secret, or, Constancy in Distress
• E-text of The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood / Whicher, George Frisbie, 1915