that such authoresses as Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Haywood should be dismissed from notice as infamous scribbling women.[3] Inded [Transcriber’s note:  sic] the position of women novelists was anything but assured at the beginning of the eighteenth century.  They had to support the disfavor and even the malign attacks of established men of letters who scouted the pretensions of the inelegant to literary fame, and following the lead of Boileau, discredited the romance as absurd and unclassical.  Moreover, the moral soundness of fictitious fables was questioned by scrupulous readers, and the amatory tales turned out in profusion by most of the female romancers were not calculated to reassure the pious, even though prefaced by assertions of didactic aim and tagged with an exemplary moral.  Nevertheless the tribe of women who earned their living chiefly by the proceeds of their pens rapidly increased.[4]

Mrs. Haywood, as we have seen, looked to the booksellers for support when her husband disclaimed her.  Of all the amazons of prose fiction who in a long struggle with neglect and disparagement demonstrated the fitness of their sex to follow the novelist’s calling, none was more persistent, more adaptable, or more closely identified with the development of the novel than she.  Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Manley must be given credit as pioneers in fiction, but much of their best work was written for the stage.  Eliza Haywood, on the other hand, added little to her reputation by her few dramatic performances.  She achieved her successes first and last as a writer of romances and novels, and unlike Mrs. Aubin and her other rivals continued to maintain her position as a popular author over a considerable period of time.  During the thirty-six years of her activity the romances of Defoe and of Mrs. Jane Barker gave place to the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, yet the “female veteran” kept abreast of the changes in the taste of her public and even contributed slightly to produce them.  Nor was her progress accomplished without numerous difficulties and discouragements.  In spite of all, however, Mrs. Haywood remained devoted to her calling and was still scribbling when the great Dr. Johnson crowned the brows of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox to celebrate the publication of “The Life of Harriot Stuart” (1750).  After such recognition a career in letters was open to women without reproach.  Though unlaureled by any lexicographer, and despised by the virtuous Mrs. Lennox,[5] Mrs. Haywood, nevertheless, had done yeoman service in preparing the way for modest Fanny Burney and quiet Jane Austen.  Moreover she was the only one of the old tribe of romancieres who survived to join the new school of lady novelists, and in her tabloid fiction rather than in the criminal biography, or the voyage imaginaire, or the periodical essay, may best be studied the obscure but essential link between the “voluminous extravagances” of the “Parthenissa” kind and the hardly less long-winded histories of “Pamela” and “Clarissa.”