The novelistic output of Mary Davys displays a remarkable range of forms and styles; indeed, her growth as a novelist may be said to recapitulate in miniature the rapidly developing history of the genre in the early decades of the eighteenth century. It was a form which then bore the relationship to the established genres of an impecunious cousin living precariously at the edge of social respectability and legitimacy. Beginning her literary career with a simple novella, Davys soon progressed to narrative of increasing complexity and sophistication, encompassing forms as diverse as the epistolary novel, disguised autobiography, and realistic comic fiction. In part, the impetus for this rapid development derived from her experience with the drama, which influenced her profoundly (as it subsequently did Fielding) and conferred upon her mature novels a formal discipline highly unusual in narratives of the period. Her novels also testify eloquently to her...