Haywood, Eliza

Love in Excess

Eliza Haywood (1693-1756) was on of the most successful writers of her time; indeed, the two most popular English novels in the early eighteenth-century were Robinson Crusoe and HaywoodÂ’s first novel, Love in Excess. As this edition enables modern readers to discover, its enormous success is easy to understand. Love in Excess is a well crafted novel in which the claims of love and ambition are pursued through multiple storylines until the heroine engineers a melodramatic conclusion.

Haywood's frankness about female sexuality may explain the later neglect of Love in Excess. (In contrast, her accomplished domestic novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, has remained available.) Love in Excess and its reception provide a lively and valuable record of the challenge that female desire posed to social decorum.

For the second Broadview edition, the appendix of eighteenth-century responses to Haywood has been considerably expanded.

Fantomina and Other Works (Broadview Literary Texts)

This collection of early works by Eliza Haywood includes the well-known novella Fantomina (1725) along with three other short, highly engaging Haywood works: The Tea-Table (1725), Reflections on the Various Effects of Love (1726), and Love-Letters on All Occasions (1730). In these writings, Haywood arouses the vicarious experience of erotic love while exploring the ethical and social issues evoked by sexual passion.

This Broadview edition includes an introduction that focuses on HaywoodÂ’s life and career and on the status of prose fiction in the early eighteenth century. Also included are appendices of contextual materials from the period comprising writings by Haywood on female conduct, eighteenth-century pornography (from Venus in the Cloister), and a source text (Nahum TateÂ’s A Present for the Ladies).

The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (Broadview Literary Texts Series)

Prolific even by eighteenth-century standards, Eliza Haywood was the author of more than eighty titles, including short fiction, novels, periodicals, plays, poetry, and a political pamphlet for which she was briefly jailed. From her early successes (most notably Love in Excess) to later novels such as Betsy Thoughtless (her best known work) she remained widely read, yet sneered at as a `stupid, infamous, scribbling woman' by the likes of Swift and Pope.

Betsy Thoughtless is the story of the slow metamorphosis of the heroine from thoughtless coquette to thoughtful wife. Ironically, the most decisive moment in this development may be when Betsy decides to leave her emotionally abusive and financially punishing husband; it is only after experiencing independence that she returns to her marriage and to what becomes her husband's deathbed. Betsy Thoughtless may be the first real novel of female development in English. In this edition the text is accompanied by appendices, including writings from the period that shed light on Haywood's life and work, and on her relationship with contemporaries such as Henry Fielding.

Anti-Pamela and Shamela

Published together for the first time, Eliza HaywoodÂ’s Anti-Pamela and Henry FieldingÂ’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews are the two most important responses to Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela. Anti-Pamela comments on RichardsonÂ’s representations of work, virtue, and gender, while also questioning the generic expectations of the novel that Pamela establishes, and it provides a vivid portrayal of the material realities of life for a woman in eighteenth-century London. FieldingÂ’s Shamela punctures both the figure Richardson established for himself as an author and PamelaÂ’s preoccupation with virtue

This Broadview edition also includes a rich selection of historical materials, including writings from the period on sexuality, women's work, Pamela and the print trade, and education and conduct.

Selections from The Female Spectator (Women Writers in English, 1350-1850)

After Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood was the most important English female novelist of the early eighteenth century. She also edited several serial newspapers, the most important of which, the Female Spectator, was the first modern periodical written by a woman and addressed to a female audience. This fully annotated collection of articles selected from the Female Spectator includes romantic and satiric fiction, moral essays, and social commentary, covering the broad range of concerns shared by eighteenth-century middle-class women. Perhaps most compelling to a twentieth-century audience is the evidence of what we might be tempted to call feminist awareness.

By no means revolutionary in her attitudes, Haywood nonetheless perceives the inequities of her periods social conditions for women. She offers pragmatic advice, such as how to avoid disastrous marriages, how to deal with wandering husbands, and what kind of education women should seek. The essays also report on a broad range of social actualities, from the craze for tea drinking and the dangers of gossip to the problem of compulsive gambling. They allude to such larger matters as politics, war, and diplomacy, and promote the importance of science and the urgency of developing informed relations with nature.

Selected Fiction and Drama of Eliza Haywood (Women Writers in English, 1350-1850)

This exciting edition gathers together for the first time a sampling of Haywood's writings generous enough to represent the full range of her fiction and drama and includes material from each decade of her long writing life. All texts come back into print here and here alone. The collection features six fictions, including both racy early work and later experimental prose fiction, two plays, and some powerful political writing.

The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (Eighteenth-Century Novels by Women)

The author of over eighty novels, plays, and volumes of poetry, Eliza Haywood is one of the most prolific and high-profile female authors of the eighteenth century. Her last novel, The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, is original for its unsentimental realism in its depiction of marriage and courtship among the leisure classes of the mid-eighteenth century. In his new introduction, editor John Richetti examines how HaywoodÂ’s amusing and engaging prose explores the subtleties of eighteenth-century courtship.

Out of print since the early nineteenth century, The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy is now available in an edited and fully annotated modern edition.

History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. 4 Volumes, complete.

LIFE PROG THRU PASSIONS (Novel in England 1700-1775 Series)

The Distress'd Orphan,: Or Love in a Mad-House (1726) (Augustan Reprints)