Hitherto allusion has been mainly in the direction of modern
authors, and I would now say a word or two in regard to those of an
earlier period who are also represented. Defoe, Fielding,
Richardson, Goldsmith, Smollett, Frances Burney, Samuel Lover, John
Galt, Maria Edgeworth, Susan Ferrier, William Godwin, Mary Shelley,
Fennimore Cooper, J. G. Lockhart, Leigh Hunt, Thos. Moore, Harriet
Martineau, J. L. Motley, Horace Smith, Charles Lever, Meadows
Taylor, and Wm. Carleton,--these (in greater or less degree)
notable names were bound to have a place; and, coming to less
distinguished writers, I may mention the brothers Banim, Gerald
Griffin, Mrs. S. C. Hall, Lady Morgan, the sisters Porter, W. G.
Simms, George Croly, Albert Smith, G. R. Gleig, W. H. Maxwell, Sir
Arthur Helps, Eliot Warburton, Lewis Wingfield, Thomas Miller, C.
Macfarlane, Grace Aguilar, Anne Manning, and Emma Robinson (author
of "Whitefriars"). To G. P. R. James, Harrison Ainsworth, and
James Grant I have previously alluded. It has been my endeavour to
choose the best examples of all the above-named novelists--a task
rendered specially difficult in some cases by the fact of immense
literary output. Doubtless not a few of the works so chosen are
open to criticism, but they will at least serve to illustrate
certain stages in the growth of Historical Romance. With the
exclusion of Mrs. Radcliffe, Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Gore, Lady
Blessington, Lady Fullerton, Mrs. Bray, and Mrs. Child, few will, I
imagine, find fault; but writers like Miss Tucker (A. L. O. E.) and
Miss Emily Holt still find so many readers in juvenile quarters,
that it has required a certain amount of courage to place them also
on my Index Expurgatorius! Turning once again to writers of the
sterner sex, I have ruled out C. R. Maturin, G. W. M. Reynolds, and
Pierce Egan, Junr.; and (quitting the "sensational" for the "mildly
entertaining") out of the Rev. J. M. Neale's many historical tales