Emmeline
Encyclopedia
Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle is the first novel published by English writer Charlotte Turner Smith
. A Cinderella
story in which the heroine stands outside the traditional economic structures of English society and ends up wealthy and happy, the novel is a fantasy. At the same time, it criticizes the traditional marriage arrangements of the 18th century, which allowed women little choice and prioritized the needs of the family. Smith's criticisms of marriage stemmed from her personal experience and several of the secondary characters are thinly veiled depictions of her family, a technique which both intrigued and repelled contemporary readers.
Emmeline comments on the 18th-century novel tradition, presenting reinterpretations of scenes from famous earlier works, such as Samuel Richardson
's Clarissa
(1747–48). Moreover, the novel extends and develops the tradition of Gothic fiction
. In combination with this, Smith's style marks her as an early Romantic
. Her characters learn about their identities from nature and her landscape descriptions are imbued with political messages about gender relations.
Smith had separated from her husband in 1787 and was forced to write to support herself and her children. She quickly began writing novels, which were profitable at the time. Emmeline was published a year later in 1788; the first edition sold out quickly. Smith's novel was so successful that her publisher paid her more than he had initially promised. The novel was printed in the United States, translated into French, and issued several times during the 19th century.
of Emmeline, "there were times when she did not know how a novel would finish even when she was well into the last volume", however outright errors were "rare".
, Wales
and centers around the eponymous heroine. Her parents are both dead and she has been supported by her father’s brother, Lord Montreville, at Mowbray Castle. It is suggested at the beginning of the novel that Emmeline’s parents were not married when she was born, making her illegitimate
; on these grounds, Lord Montreville has claimed Mowbray Castle for himself and his family. Emmeline has been left to be raised by servants, but through reading, she has become education accomplished and catches the eye of Lord Montreville’s son, Lord Delamere. Delamere falls in love with her and proposes but Emmeline refuses him because his father does not approve and she feels only sisterly affection for him. In order to escape Delamere’s protestations of love, Emmeline leaves Mowbray Castle and lives first with Mrs. Stafford and then Mrs. Ashwood, where Delamere continues to pursue her. Emmeline also rejects the suits of other rich men, confounding the people around her.
The Croft family, lawyers who are trying to rise in society, have influence over and control Lord Montreville. The younger Croft son secretly marries the eldest Montreville daughter to secure a fortune—a most unfortunate match from Lord Montreville’s perspective.
Delamere abducts Emmeline: he attempts to take her to Scotland and to force her to marry him. However, after falling ill of a fever, she convinces him to abandon his plans. When Delamere’s mother, Lady Montreville, becomes ill, he is compelled to visit his family. To help her recover, he promises not to see Emmeline for a year. If, after that period, he still loves her, his parents promise to allow him to marry her and she reluctantly agrees.
Emmeline becomes friends with Augusta, Delamere’s sister. Augusta marries Lord Westhaven, who by happenstance, is the brother of Emmeline’s new acquaintance in the country—Adelina. Adelina left her dissipated husband for a lover who abandoned her with a child. She is so distraught that when she sees her brother, Lord Westhaven, she fears his chastisement so much that she briefly goes insane. Emmeline nurses her and her baby; while doing so, she meets Adelina's other brother, Godolphin.
The Crofts circulate rumors of Emmeline’s infidelity to Delamere and when he visits her and sees her with Adelina’s child, he assumes the child is hers and abandons her. Emmeline then travels to France with Mrs. Stafford and Augusta, where she discovers her parents were actually married and that she deserves to inherit Mowbray Castle. Lord Montreville hands the estate over to her, after discovering he was duped by the Crofts. Delamere becomes ill upon discovering that Emmeline was never unfaithful to him. She nurses him, but refuses to marry him. His mother dies in her anxiety over his condition and he dies fighting a duel over his sister’s lover. In the end, Emmeline marries Godolphin.
fairy tale
, Smith highlights the disjunction between the fantasy and the 18th-century reality that women without property had little worth in English society.
:"I have always been told that Mrs. Smith designed, nay that she acknowledges, the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Stafford to be drawn for herself and her husband. Whatever may be Mr. Smith's faults, surely it was as wrong as indelicate, to hold up the man, whose name she bears, the father of her children, to public contempt in a novel."
ling. She compares and contrasts different forms of duelling through five different male characters. Mr. Elkerton is terrified of fighting in a duel; he remains part of the commercial class, failing to achieve the respectability of a gentleman. The elder Croft brother, also part of the commercial class, fails to challenge his wife's lover to a duel. In these characters, Smith demonstrates her "contempt for the commercial class". However, she also criticizes "aristocratic recklessnes and self-indulgence" in the characters of Delamere and de Bellozane—both fight duels intending to kill their opponents. It is the hero Godolphin who navigates a middle way. He threatens a duel but is dissuaded from carrying it out by the women in the story.
’s Clarissa
(1747–48). However, unlike Richardson's tale, Smith's does not end tragically but rather with Delamere succumbing to Emmeline’s wishes and returning her safe to her home.
; others have argued that the ending was meant to feel false and thus force readers to attend to the injustices outlined earlier in the novel.
for Emmeline's body: Delamere wants to possess both. When he first encounters Emmeline, he attempts to rape her, breaking into her room. She escapes through the winding staircases of the Gothic
castle, mimicking a scene in Horace Walpole's Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto
(1764). Darker elements of the Gothic appear in the Adelina plot line, as she descends into madness and fears violence from those surrounding her.
_by_edward_francisco_burney.jpg)
Smith's novels were praised for their descriptions of landscapes, a technique new to the novel in the late eighteenth century. In Emmeline, the heroine's identity is formed by her encounters with nature, necessitating intricate descriptions of the heroine's mind and surrounding nature. Smith's descriptions were particularly literary, drawing on Thomas Gray
's Memoirs of the Life and Writing of Mr. Gray (1775), William Gilpin
's Observations on the River Wye (1782), and Edmund Burke
's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
(1757). For example, Emmeline observes that the storm she sees from the Isle of Wight
, has "grandeur [which] gratified her taste for the sublime", indicating a Burkean view of nature. In the scene, Godolphin, a naval officer, assumes authority and rescues a foundering party. Burke had associated the sublime
with masculinity and the beautiful with femininity; Smith follows him here and indicates to the reader, via the setting, that Godolphin is the hero. However, Smith challenges these strict gender conventions, for example, when she has Emmeline decide to care for Adelina and disregard the social risk involved. Smith describes nature precisely, accurately listing flowers and trees, but she also adds "an emotional and political colouring". As Fletcher explains, "To be in Nature is to recognise, to learn and ultimately to choose. Her protagonists must look at the forms of nature to find themselves. In this sense Smith is an early Romantic
".
in April 1788 and sold for twelve shilling
s. The first edition of 1500 copies sold out quickly and a corrected second edition was quickly issued.
The novel was so successful that Cadell paid her more than he had promised, altogether 200 guineas
. Four additional editions were published before the end of the 18th century and five during the 19th century. The novel was translated into French, with six editions of L’Orpheline du Chateau appearing before 1801. There was also a Philadelphia edition in 1802. The novel was not reprinted in the 20th century until Oxford University Press
’s 1971 edition.
In general, the novel was "warmly received" and "the reviewers were mainly complimentary". The Critical Review
compared it favorably with Frances Burney's Cecilia
, particularly the detail of its characterization. The Monthly Review
praised it generally, saying "the whole is conducted with a considerable degree of art; that the characters are natural, and well discriminated: that the fable is uncommonly interesting; and that the moral is forcible and just". Mary Wollstonecraft
, who reviewed the novel anonymously for the Analytical Review
did not agree with the majority of reviewers, however. She "lamented" "that the false expectations these wild scenes excite, tend to debauch the mind, and throw an insipid kind of uniformity over the moderate and rational prospects of life, consequently adventures are sought for and created, when duties are neglected, and content despised." However, she did single out the virtuous character of Mrs. Stafford for praise.
Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility....
. A Cinderella
Cinderella
"Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper" is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune...
story in which the heroine stands outside the traditional economic structures of English society and ends up wealthy and happy, the novel is a fantasy. At the same time, it criticizes the traditional marriage arrangements of the 18th century, which allowed women little choice and prioritized the needs of the family. Smith's criticisms of marriage stemmed from her personal experience and several of the secondary characters are thinly veiled depictions of her family, a technique which both intrigued and repelled contemporary readers.
Emmeline comments on the 18th-century novel tradition, presenting reinterpretations of scenes from famous earlier works, such as 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 Clarissa
Clarissa
Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, published in 1748. It tells the tragic story of a heroine whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her family, and is the longest real novelA completed work that has been released by a publisher in...
(1747–48). Moreover, the novel extends and develops the tradition of Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
. In combination with this, Smith's style marks her as an early Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. Her characters learn about their identities from nature and her landscape descriptions are imbued with political messages about gender relations.
Smith had separated from her husband in 1787 and was forced to write to support herself and her children. She quickly began writing novels, which were profitable at the time. Emmeline was published a year later in 1788; the first edition sold out quickly. Smith's novel was so successful that her publisher paid her more than he had initially promised. The novel was printed in the United States, translated into French, and issued several times during the 19th century.
Composition
Smith and her husband had a tumultuous relationship and in April 1787, after twenty-two years of marriage, she left him. She wrote that she might “have been contented to reside in the same house with him”, had not “his temper been so capricious and often so cruel” that her “life was not safe”. Her father-in-law had settled money on her children and she expected to receive the money within a year of the separation, thinking she would have to support her children for only a year or so. She never received the money during her lifetime, however, and was forced to write until her death in 1806. In order to support her ten living children, she had to produce many works and quickly. She wrote almost every day and once works were sent to the printer, they were rarely revised or corrected. Lorraine Fletcher notes in her introduction to the Broadview PressBroadview Press
Broadview Press is an independent academic publisher that focuses on the humanities. Founded in 1985 by Don LePan, the company now employs over 25 people, has over 500 titles in print, and publishes approximately 50 titles each year...
of Emmeline, "there were times when she did not know how a novel would finish even when she was well into the last volume", however outright errors were "rare".
Plot summary
Emmeline is set in PembrokePembroke, Pembrokeshire
Pembroke is an historic settlement and former county town of Pembrokeshire in west Wales. The town and the county derive their name from that of the cantref of Penfro: Pen = "head" or "end", and bro = "region", "country", "land", and so it means essentially "Land's End".-History:The main point of...
, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
and centers around the eponymous heroine. Her parents are both dead and she has been supported by her father’s brother, Lord Montreville, at Mowbray Castle. It is suggested at the beginning of the novel that Emmeline’s parents were not married when she was born, making her illegitimate
Legitimacy (law)
At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another; and of a child who is born shortly after the parents' divorce. In canon and in civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate children...
; on these grounds, Lord Montreville has claimed Mowbray Castle for himself and his family. Emmeline has been left to be raised by servants, but through reading, she has become education accomplished and catches the eye of Lord Montreville’s son, Lord Delamere. Delamere falls in love with her and proposes but Emmeline refuses him because his father does not approve and she feels only sisterly affection for him. In order to escape Delamere’s protestations of love, Emmeline leaves Mowbray Castle and lives first with Mrs. Stafford and then Mrs. Ashwood, where Delamere continues to pursue her. Emmeline also rejects the suits of other rich men, confounding the people around her.
The Croft family, lawyers who are trying to rise in society, have influence over and control Lord Montreville. The younger Croft son secretly marries the eldest Montreville daughter to secure a fortune—a most unfortunate match from Lord Montreville’s perspective.
Delamere abducts Emmeline: he attempts to take her to Scotland and to force her to marry him. However, after falling ill of a fever, she convinces him to abandon his plans. When Delamere’s mother, Lady Montreville, becomes ill, he is compelled to visit his family. To help her recover, he promises not to see Emmeline for a year. If, after that period, he still loves her, his parents promise to allow him to marry her and she reluctantly agrees.
Emmeline becomes friends with Augusta, Delamere’s sister. Augusta marries Lord Westhaven, who by happenstance, is the brother of Emmeline’s new acquaintance in the country—Adelina. Adelina left her dissipated husband for a lover who abandoned her with a child. She is so distraught that when she sees her brother, Lord Westhaven, she fears his chastisement so much that she briefly goes insane. Emmeline nurses her and her baby; while doing so, she meets Adelina's other brother, Godolphin.
The Crofts circulate rumors of Emmeline’s infidelity to Delamere and when he visits her and sees her with Adelina’s child, he assumes the child is hers and abandons her. Emmeline then travels to France with Mrs. Stafford and Augusta, where she discovers her parents were actually married and that she deserves to inherit Mowbray Castle. Lord Montreville hands the estate over to her, after discovering he was duped by the Crofts. Delamere becomes ill upon discovering that Emmeline was never unfaithful to him. She nurses him, but refuses to marry him. His mother dies in her anxiety over his condition and he dies fighting a duel over his sister’s lover. In the end, Emmeline marries Godolphin.
Marriage
Emmeline criticizes the traditional marriage arrangements of the 18th century, which allowed women little choice and prioritized the needs of the family. Mrs. Stafford, for example, is married quite young to a man with whom she has little in common; only her love for her children keeps her in the marriage (children legally belonged to their father at this time). She has the opportunity to take a lover, but she rejects this option. The novel’s plot reveals the consequences for a woman who does choose this route. Adelina, who was also married young and is unhappy, accepts a lover (the same one Mrs. Stafford rejects). As Fletcher explains, the doubling of the two characters invites a comparison and “in keeping with the increasingly liberal tone of the time the narrator allows Adelina to be happy in the end.” The doubling also “suggest[s] that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women have more in common that some readers were prepared to accept in 1788”. Unlike in most 18th-century novels, the “fallen” woman does not die. As punishment, Adelina goes mad, but she is rewarded in the end—her husband dies and she remarries a man who makes her happy.Property
Because Emmeline is thought to be illegitimate, she stands outside the official social structure for most of the novel. She must often choose between a family she claims as her own (the Montrevilles) and her own desires. As Fletcher explains, “she embodies a fantasy that has often engaged novel readers, the fantasy that a young woman can win devoted love and overcome all difficulties by her personal qualities alone, without the help of family or dowry.” In writing a version of the CinderellaCinderella
"Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper" is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune...
fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
, Smith highlights the disjunction between the fantasy and the 18th-century reality that women without property had little worth in English society.
Autobiography
Through the Staffords, Smith draws a picture of her marriage. Throughout her career, beginning with Elegiac Sonnets (1784), Smith represented her own personal struggles in her works. In the Staffords, she showed a "responsible wife and devoted mother, who attempts to avert her husband's disgrace". In a direct parallel to Smith's own life, Mrs. Stafford must deal with her husband's creditors after which the family flees to France. Adelina also resembles elements of Smith's history, particularly the unhappy marriage that is forced on her early in life by her family. In Emmeline Smith begins a pattern of using secondary heroines to tell her story. Readers who knew her story, which she made public, could identify with her personally. As Fletcher explains, "she shrewdly promoted her career, gained sympathy for her problems as a single mother and turned herself into a celebrity through self-revelation." Initially readers found this technique fascinating and persuasive, but over the years, they came to agree with poet Anna SewardAnna Seward
Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield.-Life:Seward was the elder daughter of Thomas Seward , prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author...
:"I have always been told that Mrs. Smith designed, nay that she acknowledges, the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Stafford to be drawn for herself and her husband. Whatever may be Mr. Smith's faults, surely it was as wrong as indelicate, to hold up the man, whose name she bears, the father of her children, to public contempt in a novel."
Duelling
Smith explores femininity through her portrayal of marriage of property and masculinity through duelDuel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
ling. She compares and contrasts different forms of duelling through five different male characters. Mr. Elkerton is terrified of fighting in a duel; he remains part of the commercial class, failing to achieve the respectability of a gentleman. The elder Croft brother, also part of the commercial class, fails to challenge his wife's lover to a duel. In these characters, Smith demonstrates her "contempt for the commercial class". However, she also criticizes "aristocratic recklessnes and self-indulgence" in the characters of Delamere and de Bellozane—both fight duels intending to kill their opponents. It is the hero Godolphin who navigates a middle way. He threatens a duel but is dissuaded from carrying it out by the women in the story.
Genre
Eighteenth-century novel
Smith’s novel comments on the development of the genre during the 18th century. For example, usually the heroine marries the first man she thinks of as a possible husband in the novel, but this is not the case in Emmeline. Emmeline marries Godolphin, a character who does not appear until half-way through the narrative. Some readers felt that this was dangerous, since it suggested that the ideal woman would have a romantic past. Smith also rewrites earlier scenes from bestselling novels, offering her own interpretation of them. For example, “Delamere’s half-tricking, half-forcing Emmeline into a waiting coach” mirrors a scene from Samuel RichardsonSamuel 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 Clarissa
Clarissa
Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady is an epistolary novel by Samuel Richardson, published in 1748. It tells the tragic story of a heroine whose quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her family, and is the longest real novelA completed work that has been released by a publisher in...
(1747–48). However, unlike Richardson's tale, Smith's does not end tragically but rather with Delamere succumbing to Emmeline’s wishes and returning her safe to her home.
Cinderella story
The structure of Emmeline follows the Cinderella pattern: the poor, social outcast becomes rich and socially acceptable. This easy plot resolution, which was expected by readers at the time, was unconvincing to some, such as novelist Walter ScottWalter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
; others have argued that the ending was meant to feel false and thus force readers to attend to the injustices outlined earlier in the novel.
Gothic novel
The castle is a metaphorMetaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for Emmeline's body: Delamere wants to possess both. When he first encounters Emmeline, he attempts to rape her, breaking into her room. She escapes through the winding staircases of the Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
castle, mimicking a scene in Horace Walpole's Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto
The Castle of Otranto is a 1764 novel by Horace Walpole. It is generally regarded as the first gothic novel, initiating a literary genre which would become extremely popular in the later 18th century and early 19th century...
(1764). Darker elements of the Gothic appear in the Adelina plot line, as she descends into madness and fears violence from those surrounding her.
Style
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
's Memoirs of the Life and Writing of Mr. Gray (1775), William Gilpin
William Gilpin (clergyman)
The Reverend William Gilpin was an English artist, clergyman, schoolmaster, and author, best known as one of the originators of the idea of the picturesque.-Early life:...
's Observations on the River Wye (1782), and Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a 1757 treatise on aesthetics written by Edmund Burke. It attracted the attention of prominent Continental thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant....
(1757). For example, Emmeline observes that the storm she sees from the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
, has "grandeur [which] gratified her taste for the sublime", indicating a Burkean view of nature. In the scene, Godolphin, a naval officer, assumes authority and rescues a foundering party. Burke had associated the sublime
Sublime (philosophy)
In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...
with masculinity and the beautiful with femininity; Smith follows him here and indicates to the reader, via the setting, that Godolphin is the hero. However, Smith challenges these strict gender conventions, for example, when she has Emmeline decide to care for Adelina and disregard the social risk involved. Smith describes nature precisely, accurately listing flowers and trees, but she also adds "an emotional and political colouring". As Fletcher explains, "To be in Nature is to recognise, to learn and ultimately to choose. Her protagonists must look at the forms of nature to find themselves. In this sense Smith is an early Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
".
Publication and reception
Emmeline was published in four volumes by Thomas CadellThomas Cadell (publisher)
Thomas Cadell was a successful 18th-century English bookseller, who published works by some of the most famous writers of the century....
in April 1788 and sold for twelve shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
s. The first edition of 1500 copies sold out quickly and a corrected second edition was quickly issued.
The novel was so successful that Cadell paid her more than he had promised, altogether 200 guineas
Guinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
. Four additional editions were published before the end of the 18th century and five during the 19th century. The novel was translated into French, with six editions of L’Orpheline du Chateau appearing before 1801. There was also a Philadelphia edition in 1802. The novel was not reprinted in the 20th century until Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
’s 1971 edition.
In general, the novel was "warmly received" and "the reviewers were mainly complimentary". The Critical Review
The Critical Review
The Critical Review was first edited by Tobias Smollett from 1756 to 1763, and was contributed to by Samuel Johnson, David Hume, John Hunter, and Oliver Goldsmith, until 1817....
compared it favorably with Frances Burney's Cecilia
Cecilia (novel)
Cecilia, subtitled Memoirs of an Heiress, is a novel by Frances Burney, set in 1779 and published in 1782.-Background:Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress was published in July 1782...
, particularly the detail of its characterization. The Monthly Review
Monthly Review (London)
The Monthly Review was an English periodical founded by Ralph Griffiths, a Nonconformist bookseller. The first periodical in England to offer reviews, it featured the novelist and poet Oliver Goldsmith as an early contributor. William Kenrick, the "superlative scoundrel", was editor from 1759 to...
praised it generally, saying "the whole is conducted with a considerable degree of art; that the characters are natural, and well discriminated: that the fable is uncommonly interesting; and that the moral is forcible and just". Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
, who reviewed the novel anonymously for the Analytical Review
Analytical Review
The Analytical Review was a periodical established in London in 1788 by the publisher Joseph Johnson and the writer Thomas Christie. Part of the Republic of Letters, it was a gadfly publication, which offered readers summaries and analyses of the many new publications issued at the end of the...
did not agree with the majority of reviewers, however. She "lamented" "that the false expectations these wild scenes excite, tend to debauch the mind, and throw an insipid kind of uniformity over the moderate and rational prospects of life, consequently adventures are sought for and created, when duties are neglected, and content despised." However, she did single out the virtuous character of Mrs. Stafford for praise.
External links
- Volume 1 (Third edition) at Google Books
- Volume 2 (Third edition) at Google Books
- Volume 3 (Third edition) at Google Books
- Volume 4 (Third edition) at Google Books