SOURCE: "Sarah Scott: A Reconsideration," in Coranto, 1973, pp. 9–15.

In the following essay, the critic contrasts Scott's writing style in her letters with that found in her novels, maintaining that the qualities of eloquence and wit displayed in her voluminous correspondence are missing from her fiction.

The twentieth-century reader who happens upon the eighteenth-century novel A Description of Millenium Hall (1762) is apt to be put off quickly by its unremitting tendentiousness.¹ Without compensating artistic beauties, such as strong characterization or eloquent style, the book is easy to lay aside long before one reaches the end. In large part this must be attributed to the inability of the author to transcend the common-place, to invoke the artistic imagination necessary for first-rate work. As Walter Crittenden has said:

It is as a gentlewoman, alert to the intellectual and social tendencies of the day, yet guided by a native dignity and strict...