Throughout her life Charlotte Smith was accused of alluding too often in her novels to her own misfortunes, of indulging an "egotism" that her readers found distressing and inappropriate. Her writings indeed contain explicit references to her unhappy condition: the prefaces to her books are highly personal in tone, and she frequently invents characters whose situations bear a striking resemblance to her own. Forced by unfortunate marital circumstances to depend on her writing as a means of subsistence for herself and her large family and embittered by the unwillingness of her husband and relations to contribute even the smallest sums for their relief, it is not surprising that her work should be infused with a strong tone of indignation, alienation, and regret, and with a profound sense of injustice at a legal system that could withhold money from a family so obviously in the right and in need...