abhorrence for the whole "Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe" of novels, we
cannot deny the authoress the distinction accorded her by the
"Biographia Dramatica" of being--for her time, at least--"the most
voluminous female writer this kingdom ever produced." Moreover, it is
not Richardson, the meticulous inventor of the epistolary novel, but the
past-mistress of sensational romance who is credited with originating
the English domestic novel. Compared with the delicate perceptions and
gentle humor of Fanny Burney and Jane Austen, Mrs. Haywood's best
volumes are doubtless dreary enough, but even if they only crudely
foreshadow the work of incomparably greater genius, they represent an
advance by no means slight. From "Love in Excess" to "Betsy Thoughtless"
was a step far more difficult than from the latter novel to "Evelina."
As pioneers, then, the author of "Betsy Thoughtless" and her obscurer
contemporaries did much to prepare the way for the notable women
novelists who succeeded them. No modern reader is likely to turn to the
"Ouida" of a bygone day--as Mr. Gosse calls her--for amusement or for
admonition, but the student of the period may find that Eliza Haywood's
seventy or more books throw an interesting sidelight upon public taste
and the state of prose fiction at a time when the half created novel was
still "pawing to get free his hinder parts."

FOOTNOTES

[1]
E. Bernbaum, _Mrs. Behn's Biography a Fiction_, PMLA, XXVIII, 432.

[2]
David Erskine Baker, _Companion to the Play House_, 1764.

[3]