The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza HaywoodWhicher, George Frisbie
General
The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood
Whicher, George Frisbie
Haywood, Eliza Fowler, 1693?-1756
A less comprehensive survey of current tittle-tattle, perhaps modeled on
Mrs. Manley's "Court Intrigues" (1711), stole forth anonymously on 16
October, 1724, under the caption, "Bath-Intrigues: in four Letters to a
Friend in London," a title which sufficiently indicates the nature of
the work. Like the "Memoirs of a Certain Island" these letters consist
of mere jottings of scandal. Most probably both productions were from
the same pen, though "Bath-Intrigues" has been attributed to Mrs.
Manley.[20] Opposite the title-page Roberts, the publisher, advertised
"The Masqueraders," "The Fatal Secret," and "The Surprise" as by the
same author. One of Mrs. Haywood's favorite quotations, used by her
later as a motto for the third volume of "The Female Spectator," stands
with naïve appropriateness on the title-page:
"There is a Lust in Man, no Awe can tame,
Of loudly publishing his Neighbor's Shame."
The writer of "Bath-Intrigues," moreover, did not hesitate to recommend
Eliza's earlier novels to the good graces of scandal-loving readers, for
she describes a certain letter as "amorous as Mrs. O--- F---d's Eyes,
or the Writings of the Author of Love in Excess." Most curious of all is
the fact that the composer of the four letters, who signs herself J.B.,
refers _en passant_ to Belinda's inconstancy to Sir Thomas Worthly, an
allusion to the story of the second part of "The British Recluse." This
reference would indicate either that there was some basis of actuality
in the earlier fiction, or that Mrs. Haywood was using imaginary scandal
to pad her collection. However that may be, this second _chronique
scandaleuse_ was apparently no less successful, though less renowned,
than the first, for a third edition was imprinted during the following
March.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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