The History Of Miss Betsy Thoughtless

The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless

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.