Haywood, Eliza | Helene Koon (essay date 1978)
Helene Koon (essay date 1978)
SOURCE: "Eliza Haywood and the Female Spectator" in The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. XLII, No. 1, Winter, 1978, pp. 43-55.
[In the following essay, Koon discusses the social context of Haywood's periodical The Female Spectator.]
Eliza Haywood, daughter of a London shopkeeper, was probably born in 1690, probably married Valentine Haywood about 1710, and probably left him somewhere between 1715 and 1720.1 The vagueness of these facts indicates the slight attention paid the woman who burst like a rocket on the London literary scene in 1720 with the publication of her first book, Love in Excess; or, The Fatal Enquiry. By 1725 that novel was in its sixth edition, and the author had a long list of other works as well as two four-volume collections to her credit.2
During the twenties, she became well known to London readers and was associated with the Whigs,...
[The entire page is 6642 words long]
Navigate
