SOURCE: "Fiction as Contemporary History," in Novels of the 1740s, University of Georgia Press, 1982, pp. 53-73.

In the following excerpt, Beasley points to discrepancies between the literary principles Manley espouses in the preface to Queen Zarah—especially realistic characterization—and what he regards as the novel's scurrilous portraits of the Duchess of Marlborough and other leading Whigs of the day.

As feigned records of scandal and foolishness in places high and low, the spy fictions of Marana, Montesquieu, Lyttelton, and Mme de Graffigny all belong to the same family of pseudohistories, which also includes a prominent cousin, the secret history, or chronique scandaleuse. Secret histories by writers like Delarivière Manley and Eliza Haywood were more controversial than the circumspect spy fictions, although the two kinds of feigned history closely resemble one another. The chief difference between the two is that the secret history usually treats a much...