Amelia Beauclerc

AB 's half-dozen novels, all published within a decade of the early nineteenth century and of oddly varying quality, centre on the theme of bad parenting. Many include travel and several touch the fringes of the French Revolution. They are heavily, sometimes punitively, didactic; their satiric butts include both learned women and unmarried women, as well as inadequate fathers and patriarchs. They are rich in individually riveting scenes and in the questioning of gender assumptions.