“Almost Stunned at the Sound of my Own Voice”: Internal/External Exploration and Female Penetration in “Winkfield’s” The Female American
The Female American prefigures, serving as a kind of “oracle” or found hermit’s manuscript for the “female gothic” novel within the context of trans-Atlantic, long eighteenth-century...
Is It Strange to Say the New York Times Magazine Did Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Dirty?
On September 22, 2020 renowned eighteenth-century travel writer and early anti antivaxxer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu made her latest public appearance since her death in...
One Man Giveth, Another Taketh Away: Pet Ownership, Romantic Courtship, and Financial Hardship in Haywood’s Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751) and Burney’s Camilla (1796)
“All commerce of this kind between men and women is like that of the Boys and Frogs in L’Estrange’s Fable.—‘Tis play to you, but ‘tis...
Privacy, Letters, and Constructing a (Fictional) Female Self in the History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless
Within the first 70 pages of Eliza Haywood’s 1751 novel The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, vol. 2 (pp. 181-251), appear 13 letters: one to Mr. Trueworth...
Governing by “Persuasion” not “Force”: Fiction + Nonfiction = Power in Richardson’s Letters Written to and for Particular Friends on the Most Important Occasions
In his Preface to Letters Written to and for Particular Friends on the Most Important Occasions, Richardson sets readers up for the intensely focused power dynamics at...