her life romantically disguised as the Secret History of Eliza, nor was
there One of the Fair Sex (real or pretended) to chronicle her "strange
and surprising adventures" or to print her passion-stirring epistles, as
had happened with Mrs. Aphra Behn's fictitious exploits and amorous
correspondence[1]. Indeed the first biographer of Mrs. Haywood[2] hints
that "from a supposition of some improper liberties being taken with her
character after death by the intermixture of truth and falsehood with
her history," the apprehensive dame had herself suppressed the facts of
her life by laying a "solemn injunction on a person who was well
acquainted with all the particulars of it, not to communicate to any one
the least circumstance relating to her." The success of her precaution
is evident in the scantiness of our information about her. The few
details recorded in the "Biographia Dramatica" can be amplified only by
a tissue of probabilities. Consequently Mrs. Haywood's one resemblance
to Shakespeare is the obscurity that covers the events of her life.

She was born in London, probably in 1693, and her father, a man by the
name of Fowler, was a small shop-keeper.[3] She speaks vaguely of having
received an education beyond that afforded to the generality of her sex.
Her marriage to Valentine Haywood,[4] a clergyman at least fifteen years
older than his spouse, took place before she was twenty, for the
Register of St. Mary Aldermary records on 3 December, 1711, the
christening of Charles, son of Valentine Haywood, clerk, and Elizabeth
his wife. Her husband held at this time a small living in Norfolk, and
had recently been appointed lecturer of St. Mathews, Friday Street.
Whether the worthy cleric resided altogether in London and discharged
his duties in the country by proxy, or whether Mrs. Haywood, like
Tristram Shandy's mother, enjoyed the privilege of coming to town only
on certain interesting occasions, are questions which curious research
fails to satisfy. At any rate, one of the two children assigned to her