in the "Gentleman's Magazine," the "Monthly," or the 'Critical," or in the catalogues of modern booksellers. In the Chronological List I have dated each work from the earliest advertisement of its publication. Naturally I have incurred obligations to scholars who have previously passed over the same little-cultivated territory. Mr. Arundell Esdaile of the British Museum staff both facilitated the course of my investigations in England by valuable suggestions and cheered it by his cordial hospitality. To Professors R. P. Utter of Amherst, J. M. Clapp of Lake Forest College, A. H. Upham of Miami University, and A. H. Thorndike of Columbia I am indebted for friendly advice, encouragement, and helpful criticism. And above all my thanks are due to Professor W. P. Trent, whose love of eighteenth century letters suggested the subject of this research, whose sage and kindly supervision fostered the work through every stage in its development, and for whose forthcoming "Life and Times of Daniel Defoe' this monograph is intended as a footnote. URBANA, ILLINOIS. G. F. W. THE LIFE AND ROMANCES OF MRS. ELIZA HAYWOOD CHAPTER I ELIZA HAYWOOD'S LIFE Autobiography was almost the only form of writing not attempted by Eliza Haywood in the course of her long career as an adventuress in letters. Unlike Mme de Villedieu or Mrs. Manley she did not publish the story of her life romantically disguised as the Secret History of Eliza, nor was there One of the Fair Sex (real or pretended) to chronicle her "strange and surprising adventures" or to print her passion-stirring epistles, as had happened with Mrs. Aphra Behn's fictitious exploits and amorous correspondence.1 Indeed the first biographer of Mrs. Haywood2 hints that “from a supposition of some improper liberties being taken with her character after death by the intermixture of truth and falsehood with her history," the apprehensive dame had herself suppressed the facts of her life by laying a "solemn injunction on a person who was well acquainted with all the particulars of it, not to communicate to any one the least circumstance relating to her." The success of her precaution is evident in the scantiness of our information about her. The few details recorded in the "Biographia Dramatica" can be amplified only by a 1 E. Bernbaum, Mrs. Behn's Biography a Fiction, PMLA, XXVIII, 432. 2 David Erskine Baker, Companion to the Play House, 1764. |