Eliza Haywood

1. Eliza Haywood By Morgan Gagnon and Laura Price

2. Placing Haywood • Eliza Haywood was born Eliza Fowler in 1693. • Haywood worked in many genres, “including drama, poetry, the political essay, the scandal chronicle, periodical writing, theater history, and translation, in addition to the prose fiction for which she is best known” (Kastan). • Eliza published over 70 works in under 40 years. Between the years of 1719 and 1729 she produced an average of one novel every three months

3. Placing Haywood • Haywood was one of three very popular female writers during her lifetime; James Sterling referred to Delarivier Manley, Aphra Behn and Eliza as the “fair Triumvirate of Wit” All three women focused on writing amatory novels exploring gender politics in relationships and gender relations and inequality in society. One example of amatory fiction is “Fantomina”.

4. Early Work • Haywood left her husband and had to depend on income from her writing to support herself. She later had two children with Richard Savage and William Hatchet. Both men were significant writers and collaborated with Eliza professionally in writing plays and novels. • Her first novel was called Love in Excess. This was an “amorous intrigue” with two sequels published during the span of the following year for fervent followers. Love in Excess then went through two editions and multiple reissues.

5. Early Work • Love in Excess (1719), was a huge success. Following this Eliza tried out playwriting. She also wrote a series of religious pamphlets in collaboration with Defoe. Neither was very lucrative and she turned back to writing prose fiction. • “The Stage not answering my Expectations,… made me turn my Genius another Way” -Haywood

6. Early Periodical Work • Haywood wrote the first English periodical for women by a woman. It was called The Female Spectator. It was published monthly for about two years. (Embryonic version of Cosmo!)

7. Business Pursuits • Haywood opened a bookshop in London’s Covent Garden called The Sign of Fame 1741. Lasted less than a year but she continued in the book selling business as a distributor and printer.

8. Developing the Novel • In 1741 she released Anti-Pamela; or, Feign’d Innocence Detected. • Parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740)which was immensely popular and illicted numerous responses from the public and writers alike, most famously Henry Fielding’s Shamela. Haywood’s protagonist, Syrena, is less a put-upon innocent and more of a crafty opportunist.

9. Transition to Virtue • After the financial success of Richardson’s Pamela which focused on the virtuous women, Haywood altered her writing to reflect the public’s taste for rigid morality. • An address to the public in 1744 on her newfound piousness: It is very much, by the Choice we make of Subjects for our Entertainment, that the refine’d Taste distinguishes itself from the vulgar and more gross: Reading is universally allowed to be one of the most improving, as well as agreeable Amusements; but then to render it so, one should, among the Number of Books which are perpetually issuing from the Press, endeavour to single out such as promise to be most conducive to those Ends.

10. Transition to Virtue • In this address she also acknowledges how her own life has been reformed along with her writing: I … acknowledge, that I have run through as many Scenes of Vanity and Folly as the greatest Coquet of them all … . My Life, for some Years, was a continued Round of what I then called Pleasure, and my whole Time engross’d by a Hurry of promiscuous Diversions.—But whatever Inconveniences such a manner of Conduct has brought upon myself, I have this Consolation, to think that the Publick may reap some Benefit from it.

11. Moral Novels • Her novels from this point-- The Fortunate Foundlings (1744), The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751), and The History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (1753)-- had an expressly moral aim and upheld the standard of the virtuous domestic exemplified by Pamela. • Her new attitude was also reflected in her release of conduct literature such Epistle for the Ladies (1794)

12. Political Responses to “The Forty-Five” • The attempts of the Scottish Stuart House to regain the throne in Britain culminated in the Jacobite Rising of 1745, known as The Forty Five. • In 1746 she re-launched The Parrot periodical to comment on the Jacobite rising of the previous year.

13. Political Responses to “The Forty-Five” • She released a pamphlet in 1749 called “A Letter from H---G--g, Esq....To a Particular Friend” about Charles Edward Stuart a.k.a. Bonnie Prince Charlie a.k.a. The Young Pretender. It focused on his travels in Scotland after the defeat of the Jacobites. This caused some controversy and resulted in Haywood being taken into custody by authorities, although she received no punishment.

14. Haywood’s Politics • Unlike Behn or Manley (the rest of the Triumvirate of Wit), Haywood’s novels were not tied to political views of the Tories or the Whigs. This led to a wider audience, more popularity and a focus on developing a novel in its own right rather than catering to readers of a political party. • Her political writings were complicated in that they were less outright critiques and employed fictive elements reminiscent of her amatory writings.

15. Contemporary Reputation • Alexander Pope in his Dunciad wrote of her “cow-like udders” and “Two babes of love close clinging to her waste”. He said she represented the “profligate licentiousness of … shameless [s]cribblers...That sex, which ought least to be capable of such malice or impudence” • He implied that she was a hack who was not only selling herself in her literature but also selling her body.

16. Contemporary Reputation • Jonathan Swift said she was a “a stupid, infamous, scribbling woman”, although he also admitted to being unfamiliar with her work. • She herself noted "that Tide of Raillery, which all of my Sex … must expect once they exchange the Needle for the Quill”

17. Death and Legacy • She died on February 25th 1756 after a prolonged illness. She was buried in Westminster, although not in the Abbey. • Eliza was very famous during her lifetime but has received critical acclaim only recently. Her writing has influenced many well known authors including Richardson, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen