Eliza Haywood
Eliza Haywood (née Fowler), born around 1693, was a prominent British writer and actress known for her prolific contributions to the early 18th-century literary scene. Little is known about her personal life, with details about her marriage to cleric Valentine Haywood and her early years remaining subjects of scholarly debate. Haywood gained recognition in 1719 with her bestselling novel *Love in Excess*, which established her trademark style featuring intricate romantic plots and strong female characters. Over the next decade, she published more than two dozen novels, becoming a pioneer in the use of epistolary techniques to advance narrative and character development.
In addition to her writing, Haywood was active in the theater, performing in various plays and contributing to scriptwriting until restrictions on theater in 1737 led her back to literature. Her later works exhibited a more conservative tone, including conduct books and political pamphlets, reflecting social issues of her time. Notably, her 1749 pamphlet led to her arrest for seditious libel, illustrating the risks she faced as a female writer. Haywood's legacy includes not only her innovative storytelling but also her role in shaping the portrayal of women's experiences in literature until her death in 1756.
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Eliza Haywood
Writer
- Born: c. 1693
- Birthplace: Probably London, England
- Died: February 25, 1756
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Very little is known of Eliza Haywood’s (née Fowler) private life, and scholars dispute some of what has been generally accepted as true. She was probably born in 1693, and it is believed that she was the daughter of a London merchant. The commonly accepted belief that she was, as nineteenth-century novelist Virginia Woolf wrote, the “runaway wife” of cleric Valentine Haywood, is also in question by scholars such as Christine Blouch (Studies in English Literature, 1991). This much seems verifiable: Eliza Fowler became Eliza Haywood through marriage, and in 1715, she appeared under the latter name as an actress in a performance of Timon of Athens in Dublin, Ireland. Four years later she and her two children seem to be living apart from her husband. In 1719 she also published Love in Excess, a sensual novel that became a best seller and began her prolific writing career.
Between 1719 and 1730, Haywood published over two dozen novels, all of them characterized by the titillating nature of their plots and subject matter. Also during these years, Love in Excess was so popular that it went through seven editions. The novel supplies the format typical of her works: a scheming upper-class rake pursues an innocent maiden while he is pursued by a female rake. Through machinations of the plot, he is made to see the error of his ways and by the end, most of the characters are happily settled. Haywood created the prototype of the heroine whose virtue is constantly assailed, as well as the technique of letter writing to reveal character and propel the plot, nearly twenty years before Samuel Richardson’s epistolary novelPamela.
In 1728, Alexander Pope satirized Haywood’s life and works in books two and three of his poem The Dunciad, portraying her as a careless, female hack writer. Haywood spent most of the decade between 1730 and 1740 on the stage. She acted in six plays and wrote three. She was active in Henry Fielding’s Little Theater Haymarket Company, but when Robert Walpole’s Licensing Act of 1737 curtailed theater performances, Haywood returned to writing novels. Her 1736 Adventures of Eovaii, Princess of Ijaveo is a satire of Walpole, often identified as the first prime minister of Great Britain.
From 1740 to the end of her life, Haywood’s work became ostensibly more conservative. A Present for a Servant Maid (1743) is a conduct book raising awareness of the possible pitfalls of a servant’s life. Haywood also wrote anonymous political works. In 1749, one such pamphlet, A Letter from H— G—-g, Esq., was seen as promoting Charles Stuart, the Young Pretender to the throne, and Haywood was arrested for seditious libel. The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751) is representative of Haywood’s style during this period of her career. The work traces the trials and triumphs of Betsy Thoughtless, who, as her name suggests, is heedless in her approach to life in society but eventually comes to a state of mind sensible enough to value a suitable mate such as Mr. Trueworth.
Haywood died in 1756. She left two completed novels that were published posthumously.