Eliza Haywood — The Female Spectator and Betsy Thoughtless with Kelly J. Plante

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Details of Eliza Haywood’s life may be murky today, but in the early 18th century, she was a literary force—writing plays and bestselling novels, editing periodicals, and ruffling the feathers of male contemporaries like Alexander Pope. Academic Kelly J. Plante joins us this week to discuss Haywood’s anonymous wartime writing for The Female Spectator, the first periodical written by and for women, as well as her 1751 novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless.

Mentioned in this episode:

Kelly J. Plante’s recent scholarship on Eliza Haywood in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Eliza Haywood: 

Love in Excess 

Fantomina 

The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless

The Female Spectator: Book 14, Letter 1

The Parrot

Epistles for the Ladies

Samuel Richardson: 

Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded 

Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady

Daniel Defoe: 

Robinson Crusoe

Alexander Pope:

The Dunciad

Henry Fielding:

The History of Tom Jones

Frances Burney

Jane Austen

The Sound of Music’s “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”

“The Things We Do For Love” by 10cc

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 49 on Aphra Behn

A Political Biography of Eliza Haywood by Kathryn R. King

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