Frances Sheridan, "the ingenious Mrs. Sheridan," was valued by her contemporaries for her ability to create amiable characters and to move her reader's emotions. Her major work, Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761), an extremely popular novel, was termed by an approving critic in the Critical Review "beyond measure affecting and pathetic." But Sheridan also exhibits a sense of humor and a sense of irony. She is interested in the strangeness of human life and especially in the sexual lives of men and women. Visibly a follower of Samuel Richardson, she yet questions some of his assumptions about the moral imperatives facing men and women in emotional and sexual relationships.

Frances Chamberlaine was born in Ireland, the daughter of Dr. Philip Chamberlaine, prebend of Rathmichael and archdeacon of Glendalough, and Anastasia White Chamberlaine. Her mother died shortly after her birth. According to her biographer, her granddaughter Alicia Le Fanu...