Jane Barker was one of the first writers to make novel writing by a lady respectable. Her first published fiction appears as "Written by a Young Lady," but her later novels are signed with her name; unlike some of her successors she was not afraid to be identified with her imagined histories. In her mingling of tones and impressions, in her representation of fancy, memory, and desire, Barker was an influence upon the Richardsonian novel. She also announces themes and techniques found in twentieth-century novelists, particularly women writers such as Dorothy Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and Barbara Pym. Like these writers, she draws upon and fictionalizes her own experience, often with considerable humor. She can move with rapidity from sober Monday-morning impressions to fantastic, almost hallucinatory, inner visions.

Jane Barker was baptized at Blatherwicke, Northamptonshire, on 17 May 1652. This fact, discovered by her latest biographer, Jeslyn Medoff, means...