Women Writers in English 1350-1850
2 total works
After Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood was the most important woman novelist of the early eighteenth century. In the 1740s and 50s Haywood also edited several serial newspapers, the most important being The Female Spectator which appeared every month from April 1744 to May 1746 and was written with a markedly female audience in mind. The first modern periodical both written by a woman and addressed to a female audience, The Female Spectator takes up exciting themes found in Haywood's short fiction.
Although Eliza Haywood was one of the best known and most prolific writers in her own time, there is no modern edition of her works. This edition provides representative texts from Haywood's entire career, which overlaps that of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett. The six fictions and two plays provided here illustrate the many kinds of writing Haywood produced, the ways she treated important themes and issues, and the contributions
she made to the development of the English novel.
she made to the development of the English novel.