Rowe, Elizabeth - Charlotte E. Morgan (essay date 1911)
Charlotte E. Morgan (essay date 1911)
SOURCE: "The Novel," in The Rise of the Novel of Manners: A Study of English Prose Fiction Between 1600 and 1740, Russell & Russell, 1963, pp. 89–114.
[In the following excerpt, first published in 1911 and reprinted in 1963, Morgan characterizes Rowe's work as didactic character sketches similar to those found in popular periodicals.]
Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe (1674–1737) belongs in many respects to the same school as the Duchess of Newcastle, but this well-bred lady would have been unutterably shocked by her plainspoken predecessor. Mrs. Rowe undertook to inculcate principles of right living by means of sentimental piety. In 1728 appeared Friendship in Death in twenty letters from the Dead to the Living, in which the recently departed give their friends sound advice, timely warnings, and glowing accounts of heaven. There is nothing mysterious or even impressive about these ghosts, who are of the...
[The entire page is 1967 words long]
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