Amelia Opie's significance as a Romantic novelist lies in her timely, moving, and sometimes provocative domestic fiction. Like other Romantic novelists, Opie was concerned with the individual's changing relationship with society, and she chose to embody this relationship by depicting the individual's actions within the family unit. In this respect she must be considered alongside Maria Edgeworth and Elizabeth Inchbald, in the tradition of Frances Burney and Jane Austen, as a writer of the novel of manners.

Amelia Alderson Opie was born in Norwich in 1769, the only child of Dr. James Alderson and Amelia Briggs Alderson, who died when her daughter was fifteen. Though she received no formal education, young Amelia Alderson read the works of contemporary novelists, poets, and philosophers and took part in the political, religious, and literary discussions among her father and his guests, who included William Godwin and Thomas Holcroft, members of the Radical...