SOURCE: Introduction to The Reform'd Coquet: or Memoirs of Amoranda; Familiar Letters Betwixt a Gentleman and a Lady; and The Accomplish'd Rake, or a Modern Fine Gentleman, by Mary Davys, edited by Martha F. Bowden, University of Kentucky Press, 1999, pp. xxvi-xlvi.

In the following introduction to three eighteenth-century epistolary novels by the British author Mary Davys, Bowden discusses how The Reform'd Coquet, Familiar Letters, and The Accomplish'd Rake prefigure stories and styles later made famous by Samuel Richardson.

The Reform'd Coquet (1724)

The Reform'd Coquet tells the story of Amoranda, an essentially good but flighty young woman whose unfortunate tendency towards coquetry and carelessness of her reputation is tamed by Alanthus, the man who wishes to marry her. In order to effect the reformation, the handsome lover disguises himself as an old man, called Formator, and moves into her house as her guardian and guide. It is the first...