This exciting edition gathers together for the first time a sampling of Haywood's writings generous enough to represent the full range of her fiction and drama and includes material from each decade of her long writing life. All texts come back into print here and here alone. The collection features six fictions, including both racy early work and later experimental prose fiction, two plays, and some powerful political writing.

This text reprints selected non-fictional works by Haywood, with particular attention to the journalism, criticism, and "conduct and advice" material. Here, Haywood explicates and defends ideas on gender and culture that she develops obliquely elsewhere.

This text reprints selected non-fictional works by Haywood, with particular attention to the journalism, criticism, and "conduct and advice" material. Here, Haywood explicates and defends ideas on gender and culture that she develops obliquely elsewhere.

The most prolific woman writer of the eighteenth century, Eliza Haywood (1693-1756?) was a key player in the history of the English novel. Along with her contemporary Defoe, she did more than any other writer to create a market for fiction prior to the emergence of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Also one of Augustan England's most popular authors, Haywood came to fame in 1719 with the publication of her first novel, Love in Excess. In addition to writing fiction, she was a playwright, translator, bookseller, actress, theater critic, and editor of The Female Spectator , the first English periodical written by women for women. Though tremendously popular, her novels and plays from the 1720s and 30s scandalized the reading public with explicit portrayals of female sexuality and led others to call her "the Great Arbitress of Passion." Essays in this collection explore themes such as the connections between Haywood's early and late work, her experiments with the form of the novel, her involvement in party politics, her use of myth and plot devices, and her intense interest in the imbalance of power between men and women. Distinguished scholars such as Paula Backschieder, Felicity Nussbaum, and John Richetti approach Haywood from a number of theoretical and topical positions, leading the way in a crucial reexamination of her work. The Passionate Fictions of Eliza Haywood examines the formal and ideological complexities of her prose and demonstrates how Haywood's texts deft traditional schematization.

“Will be required reading not just for students of eighteenth-century literature but also for feminist critics and historians of the novel.” —Sandra M. Gilbert, award-winning poet and literary critic The most prolific woman writer of the eighteenth century, Eliza Haywood (1693–1756?) was a key player in the history of the English novel. Along with her contemporary Defoe, she did more than any other writer to create a market for fiction prior to the emergence of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Also one of Augustan England’s most popular authors, Haywood came to fame in 1719 with the publication of her first novel, Love in Excess. In addition to writing fiction, she was a playwright, translator, bookseller, actress, theater critic, and editor of The Female Spectator, the first English periodical written by women for women. Though tremendously popular, her novels and plays from the 1720s and 30s scandalized the reading public with explicit portrayals of female sexuality and led others to call her “the Great Arbitress of Passion.” Essays in this collection explore themes such as the connections between Haywood’s early and late work, her experiments with the form of the novel, her involvement in party politics, her use of myth and plot devices, and her intense interest in the imbalance of power between men and women. Distinguished scholars such as Paula Backschieder, Felicity Nussbaum, and John Richetti approach Haywood from a number of theoretical and topical positions, leading the way in a crucial reexamination of her work. The Passionate Fictions of Eliza Haywood examines the formal and ideological complexities of her prose and demonstrates how Haywood’s texts defy traditional schematization.

Published together for the first time, Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela and Henry Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews are the two most important responses to Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela. Anti-Pamela comments on Richardson’s representations of work, virtue, and gender, while also questioning the generic expectations of the novel that Pamela establishes, and it provides a vivid portrayal of the material realities of life for a woman in eighteenth-century London. Fielding’s Shamela punctures both the figure Richardson established for himself as an author and Pamela’s preoccupation with virtue. This Broadview edition also includes a rich selection of historical materials, including writings from the period on sexuality, women’s work, Pamela and the print trade, and education and conduct.

Eliza Haywood was one of the most prolific English writers in the Age of the Enlightenment. Her career, from Love in Excess (1719) to her last completed project The Invisible Spy (1755) spanned the gamut of genres: novels, plays, advice manuals, periodicals, propaganda, satire, and translations. Haywood’s importance in the development of the novel is now well-known. A Spy on Eliza Haywood links this with her work in the other genres in which she published at least one volume a year throughout her life, demonstrating how she contributed substantially to making women’s writing a locus of debate that had to be taken seriously by contemporary readers, as well as now by current scholars of political, moral, and social enquiries into the eighteenth century. Haywood’s work is essential to the study of eighteenth-century literature and this collection of essays continues the growing scholarship on this most important of women writers.

During her long and varied career, Eliza Haywood acted onstage, worked as a publisher and bookseller, and wrote prolifically in many genres, from novels of seduction to essays in periodicals. Her works illuminate the private emotional lives of people in eighteenth-century England, invite readers to consider how women in that culture defined themselves and criticized oppression, and help us better understand the social debates of the period. This volume addresses a broad range of Haywood's works, providing literary and sociopolitical context from writings by Aphra Behn, Samuel Richardson, Samuel Johnson, and others, and from contemporary documents such as advice manuals and court records. The first section, "Materials," identifies high-quality editions, reliable biographical sources, and useful background information. The second section, "Approaches," suggests ways to help students engage with Haywood's work, gain a nuanced understanding of the time period, work with primary documents, and participate in digital humanities projects.

Engendering Legitimacy: Law, Property, and Eighteenth-Century Fiction is a study of the intersecting of law, land, property, and gender in the prose fiction of Mary Davys, Daniel Defoe, Eliza Haywood, and Jonathan Swift. The law of property in early modern England established relations for men and women that artificially constructed, altered, and ended their connections with the material world, and the land they lived upon. The cultural role of land and law in a changing economy embracing new forms of property became a founding preoccupation around which grew the imaginative prose fiction that would develop into the English novel. Glover contends that questions of political and legal legitimacy raised by England's Revolution of 1688-89 were transposed to the domestic and literary spheres of the early 1700s.

The author of over eighty novels, plays, and volumes of poetry, Eliza Haywood is one of the most prolific and high-profile female authors of the eighteenth century. Her last novel, The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, is original for its unsentimental realism in its depiction of marriage and courtship among the leisure classes of the mid-eighteenth century. In his new introduction, editor John Richetti examines how Haywood's amusing and engaging prose explores the subtleties of eighteenth-century courtship. Out of print since the early nineteenth century, The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy is now available in an edited and fully annotated modern edition.