Eliza Haywood

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Standard Name: Haywood, Eliza
Birth Name: Elizabeth Fowler
Married Name: Eliza Haywood
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Pseudonym: Mira
Pseudonym: Euphrosine
Pseudonym: The Authors of the Female Spectator
Pseudonym: The Author of the Fortunate Foundlings
Pseudonym: Exploralibus
Pseudonym: The Son of a Mandarin, residing in London
EH was the most prolific novelist by number of titles (even ignoring those doubtfully ascribed) between Aphra Behn and Charlotte Smith . She also wrote poems, plays, periodicals, conduct books, translation, and theatre history. Her output of 72 works and four collections (actual or planned) skews all graphs of the rising output of published works by women. Some readers find the endless, breathless sex scenes of her earlier fiction tedious; but behind the sensationalism is a sharp mind. She is hilariously satirical, pointedly topical, formally inventive and experimental, and trenchantly critical of power misused (in both political and gender relations). Her career shows a certain direction as well as a constant opportunism. The varied origins of the novel gave her scope for original hybridizations of the pliable new form. Her Betsy Thoughtless first brought to the post-Richardsonian novel a female viewpoint unmonitored by male mentors. Her Female Spectator was the first woman's work in the new magazine genre.
Black and white engraving of Eliza Haywood by George Vertue after a painting by James Parmentier. It has an oval frame tied with a ribbon at the top and set within a rectangular from. Haywood's hair is tied back, with a lock of it showing on her left shoulder. She is wearing a dress with a deep decolletage and lace at the bosom. This engraving was used as frontispiece to vol. i of her "Secret Histories, Novels and Poems", of which the second (and perhaps only) edition appeared in 1725.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Publishing Elizabeth Helme
She also increased the length of her work from two to four volumes. The novel was dedicated to Mrs Hastings , who, says EH , had encouraged both her first and her later works.
Mrs...
Reception Charlotte Lennox
In Fielding's detailed comparison of the novel with Don Quixote, Lennox emerges superior to Cervantes in morality, probability, and character-drawing, though Cervantes is superior in other ways. This enthusiastic review was widely reprinted.
Catto, Susan J. Modest Ambition: The Influence of Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and the Ideal of Female Diffidence on Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Frances Brooke. University of Oxford, 1998.
176
Reception Mary Collyer
The pious Duchess of Somerset (formerly Lady Hertford, a respected patron and poet) skimmed this novel as it passed from hand to hand in her circle (at the end of its publication year) but assured...
Textual Features Jane West
The Danbury ladies take an avid interest in the arrival at a nearby mansion of Mr Dudley and one of his two daughters, whose mother is dead. Again the contrasted heroines (this time sisters) follow...
Textual Features Elizabeth Thomas
The range of authors quoted for chapter-headings is similar to that in her last novel, with the notable addition of passages in both prose and poetry by Martha Homely, her own formerly-used pseudonym. Poems...
Textual Features Elizabeth Singer Rowe
Some of the fictions relate to philosophical and theological debates of the time;
Bigold, Melanie. Emails to Isobel Grundy about Trotter, Carter, and Rowe. 26 Feb. 2006.
others have subject-matter typical of the novels of Eliza Haywood or Penelope Aubin . Love situations turn on eros as well as...
Textual Features Dorothea Du Bois
After seven pages on grammar, she offers pattern letters: those in verse are in effect an anthology of epistolary poems by women, a patriotically generous selection of Irish writers (Mary Monck , Mary Barber
Textual Features Clara Reeve
CR demonstrates the widest possible reading: from Homer , Virgil and Horace (all revered) and Juvenal and Persius (used to prove that not all classical authors are admirable) through the heroic romances like those of...
Textual Features Ann Radcliffe
Again AR 's influences are Walpole and Reeve .
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press, 1999.
58-9
Such elements as the heroine's unconsciously offering herself to the male gaze, revealing intimate physical charms as she lies asleep, probably do not stem directly...
Textual Features Eva Figes
Though she mentions such writers as Eliza Haywood and Mary Davys , she begins her detailed discussion with the 1790s (a time which twenty years on would be regarded as somewhat late in the history...
Textual Features Jean Plaidy
The Carr novels present perhaps JP 's heaviest concentration of plot-elements which would have been familiar to Eliza Haywood , Penelope Aubin , Ouida , and a host of popular fictioneers of every century and...
Textual Features Elizabeth Boyd
EB offers original, discriminating praise for women's writing: Susanna Centlivre (her inspiration, she says), Eliza Haywood (though she regrets her exposure of women's faults), Aphra Behn , and Delarivier Manley , whom she calls the...
Textual Features Elizabeth Griffith
EG 's collection recovers fiction of an earlier style than her own. It incorporates material from three English texts (besides the Behn , they are Penelope Aubin 's The Noble Slaves, and some of...
Textual Production Anne-Thérèse de Lambert
The letters to both children were probably written in the last decade of the seventeenth century, and were said to be influenced by the writings of Louis Silvestre de Sacy . The translator into English...
Textual Production Martha Fowke
MF began showing her poems to Aaron Hill as soon as their flirtatious relationship was launched in early 1721. Christine Gerrard believes that MF is the author of a poem printed in Eliza Haywood 's...

Timeline

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Texts

Haywood, Eliza. The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy. T. Gardner, 1753, 3 vols.
Haywood, Eliza. The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. T. Gardner, 1751, 4 vols.
Haywood, Eliza. The History of Miss Leonora Meadowson. Noble, 1788, 2 vols.
Haywood, Eliza. The Husband. T. Gardner, 1756.
Haywood, Eliza. The Injur’d Husband. D. Browne, Jr.; W. Chetwood, and J. Woodman; S. Chapman, 1722.
Haywood, Eliza. The Invisible Spy. T. Gardner, 1754, 4 vols., http://HSS Special Collections.
Castera, Louis Adrien Duperron de. The Lady’s Philosopher’s Stone. Translator Haywood, Eliza, D. Browne, Jr., and S. Chapman, 1725.
Haywood, Eliza. The Mercenary Lover. N. Dobb, 1726.
Hatchett, William et al. The Opera of Operas. W. Rayner, 1733.
Haywood, Eliza. The Parrot. Thomas Edlin and James Roberts, 4 issues.
Haywood, Eliza. The Parrot. T. Gardner, 8 issues.
Haywood, Eliza. The Perplex’d Dutchess. J. Roberts, 1727.
Haywood, Eliza. The Rash Resolve. D. Browne, Jr., and S. Chapman, 1724.
Haywood, Eliza. The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania. Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1726.
Haywood, Eliza, and Christine Blouch. The Selected Works of Eliza Haywood. Editor Pettit, Alexander, Pickering and Chatto, 2000, 6 vols.
Haywood, Eliza. The Surprize. J. Roberts, 1724.
Haywood, Eliza. The Tea-Table. J. Roberts, 1725.
Haywood, Eliza. The Unequal Conflict. J. Walthoe and J. Crokatt, 1725.
Haywood, Eliza. The Wife. T. Gardner, 1756.
Haywood, Eliza. The Wife. T. Gardner, 1756, http://HSS Special Collections.
Haywood, Eliza. The Works of Mrs. Eliza Haywood. D. Browne Jr., and S. Chapman, 1724, 4 vols.
Haywood, Eliza. The Young Lady. T. Gardner, 1-7.