Davys, Mary | George L. Barnett (essay date 1968)
George L. Barnett (essay date 1968)
SOURCE: "Mrs. Mary Davys" in Eighteenth-Century British Novelists on the Novel, edited by George L. Barnett, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968, pp. 37-38.
[In the following essay, Barnett offers a brief introduction to Davys and the "Preface" to her Works.]
As The Works of Mrs. Davys, published in two volumes in 1725, noted in the subtitle—Consisting of Plays, Novels, Poems, and Familiar Letters—this author's literary efforts attained variety. But fame, in spite of her diverse efforts, never came, and today she is forgotten. Still, the Preface to her Works "is valuable as one of the few detailed statements by a practicing novelist of the pre-Fielding period" (W. H. McBurney, "Mrs. Mary Davys: Forerunner of Fielding," PMLA, LXXIV, 1959, 350).
Born in Dublin, married to the Rev. Peter Davys, and widowed in 1698, Mrs. Davys was the recipient of some small charities...
[The entire page is 526 words long]
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