Prolific even by eighteenth-century standards, Eliza Haywood was the author of more than eighty titles, including short fiction, novels, periodicals, plays, poetry, and a political pamphlet for which she was briefly jailed. From her early successes (most notably Love in Excess) to later novels such as Betsy Thoughtless (her best known work) she remained widely read, yet sneered at as a `stupid, infamous, scribbling woman' by the likes of Swift and Pope.

Betsy Thoughtless is the story of the slow metamorphosis of the heroine from thoughtless coquette to thoughtful wife. Ironically, the most decisive moment in this development may be when Betsy decides to leave her emotionally abusive and financially punishing husband; it is only after experiencing independence that she returns to her marriage and to what becomes her husband's deathbed. Betsy Thoughtless may be the first real novel of female development in English. In this edition the text is accompanied by appendices, including writings from the period that shed light on Haywood's life and work, and on her relationship with contemporaries such as Henry Fielding....

Published together for the first time, Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela and Henry Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews are the two most important responses to Samuel Richardson's novel Pamela. Anti-Pamela comments on Richardson’s representations of work, virtue, and gender, while also questioning the generic expectations of the novel that Pamela establishes, and it provides a vivid portrayal of the material realities of life for a woman in eighteenth-century London. Fielding’s Shamela punctures both the figure Richardson established for himself as an author and Pamela’s preoccupation with virtue

This Broadview edition also includes a rich selection of historical materials, including writings from the period on sexuality, women's work, Pamela and the print trade, and education and conduct....