Such a novel is _Olinda's Adventures_, a brief epistolary narrative of 1693, a minor but convincing demonstration of the theory that a literary form such as the novel develops irregularly, by fits and starts, and of the truism that a superior mind can produce superior results with the most seemingly ungrateful materials. Of Defoe, _Olinda's Adventures_ must appear a modest precursor indeed; but measured, as a realistic-domestic novel, against the English fiction of its day, it is surprisingly mature; and if we believe the bookseller and assign its authorship to a girl of fourteen, we must look to the juvenilia of Jane Austen for the first comparable phenomenon. _Olinda's Adventures_ seems to owe what success it had entirely to the bookseller Samuel Briscoe. It appeared in 1693 in the first volume of his epistolary miscellany _Letters of Love and Gallantry and Several Other Subjects_. _All Written by Ladies_, the second volume following in 1694.[2] It may have been the nucleus of the collection, however, since it begins the volume, and since Briscoe states in "The Bookseller to the Reader" (sig. A2) that various ladies, hearing that he was going to print Olinda's letters, have sent in amorous correspondence of their own--a remark that could indicate some previous circulation in manuscript. Another edition (or issue) of the miscellany, with a slightly altered title, was advertised in 1697, but no copy of this is recorded.[3] Nothing further is heard of _Olinda_ for some years, but meanwhile Briscoe became something of a specialist in popular epistolary miscellanies, perhaps because he was a principal employer of Tom Brown, much of whose output consisted of original and translated "familiar letters." In 1718 Briscoe assembled a two-volume epistolary collection with the title _Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry and Several Occasions_; this collection was apparently made up of the best and most popular items in his miscellanies of the past twenty-five years.[4] Here _Olinda_ appears in much more impressive company than the anonymous "ladies," for the collection includes the first letter of Heloise to Abelard (said to be translated by L'Estrange) with actual correspondence and epistolary fiction by Butler, Mrs. Behn, Dennis, Otway, Etherege, Dryden, Tom Brown, Mrs. Mary Manley, Farquhar, Mrs. Centlivre, and other wits. Another edition (or issue) was advertised for W. Chetwood in 1720; and if the edition of 1724 ("Corrected. With Additions") is really the sixth, as Briscoe's title-page states, _Olinda_ must have reached a respectable number of readers.