SOURCE: "Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague: A Biographical Context," in English Studies in Canada, Vol. 7, No. 2, Summer, 1981, pp. 171-82.

In the following essay, Edwards discusses the religious references in Emily Montague, noting that Brooke's father, maternal grandfather, and husband were Church of England clergymen and that Brooke herself had a keen interest in promoting the tenets of the church.

Since its first publication by James Dodsley, the London bookseller, in April 1769, Frances Brooke's The History of Emily Montague has been considered in a variety of contexts.¹ In English literature it has been discussed as an epistolary novel in the tradition of Richardson; as a novel of sensibility; as a popular novel of the late eighteenth century; as a pre-romantic novel; and as an early feminine—and feminist—novel.² The influence of such French writers as Riccoboni and Rousseau on The History of Emily Montague, its position...