SOURCE: "Eliza Haywood and the Female Spectator" in The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. XLII, No. 1, Winter, 1978, pp. 43-55.

In the following essay, Koon discusses the social context of Haywood's periodical The Female Spectator.

Eliza Haywood, daughter of a London shopkeeper, was probably born in 1690, probably married Valentine Haywood about 1710, and probably left him somewhere between 1715 and 1720.¹ The vagueness of these facts indicates the slight attention paid the woman who burst like a rocket on the London literary scene in 1720 with the publication of her first book, Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry. By 1725 that novel was in its sixth edition, and the author had a long list of other works as well as two four-volume collections to her credit.²

During the twenties, she became well known to London readers and was associated with the Whigs, particularly Steele and Defoe. The allegiance alienated the Tory satirists, and when...