own." For the lover of eighteenth century fashions her numerous pages
have indeed a stilted, early Georgian charm, but with the passing of
Ramillies wigs and velveteen small-clothes the popularity of her novels
vanished once for all. She had her world in her time, but that world and
time disappeared with the French Revolution [a]. Now even professed
students of the novel shrink from reading many of her seventy odd
volumes, nor can the infamous celebrity conferred by Pope's attack in
"The Dunciad" save her name from oblivion. But the significance of Mrs.
Haywood's contributions cannot safely be ignored. Her romances of
palpitating passion written between 1720 and 1730 formed a necessary
complement to Defoe's romances of adventure exactly as her Duncan
Campbell pamphlets supplied the one element lacking in his. The domestic
novels of her later life foreshadowed the work of Miss Burney and Miss
Austen, while her career as a woman of letters helped to open a new
profession to her sex. Since even the weakest link in the development of
a literary form is important, I have endeavored to provide future
historians of English fiction with a compact and accurate account of
this pioneer "lady novelist."

Hitherto the most complete summary of Mrs. Haywood's life and writings
has been Sir Sidney Lee's article in the "Dictionary of National
Biography," which adds much information not found in the earlier notices
in Baker's "Biographia Dramatica" and Chalmers' "Biographical
Dictionary." The experienced palates of Mr. Edmund Gosse and Mr. Austin
Dobson have tested the literary qualities respectively of the earlier
and later aspects of her work. Professor Walter Raleigh, Dr. Charlotte
E. Morgan, and Professor Saintsbury have briefly estimated the
importance of her share in the change from romance to novel.

Perhaps the main reason for the inadequacy of these notices lies in the