ers from
a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier" Chetwood had also advertised for
speedy publication "a Book entitled, The Danger of giving way to
Passion, in Five Exemplary Novels: First, The British Recluse, or the
Secret History of Cleomira, supposed dead. Second, The Injur'd Husband,
or the Mistaken Resentment. Third, Lasselia, or the Unfortunate
Mistress. Fourth, The Rash Resolve, or the Untimely Discovery. Fifth,
Idalia, or the Self-abandon'd.[19] Written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood."
During the next three years the five novels were issued singly by
Chetwood with the help of other booksellers, usually Daniel Browne, Jr.,
and Samuel Chapman. This pair, or James Roberts, Chetwood's successor,
published most of Mrs. Haywood's early writings. The staple of her
output during the first decade of authorship was the short amatory
romance like "Love in Excess" and the "exemplary novels" just mentioned.
These exercises in fiction were evidently composed _currente calamo_,
with little thought and less revision, for an eager and undiscriminating
public. Possibly, as Mr. Gosse conjectures,[20] they were read chiefly
by milliners and other women on the verge of literacy. But though
persons of solid education avoided reading novels and eastern tales as
they might the drinking of drams, it is certain that no one of scanty
means could have afforded Mrs. Haywood's slender octavos at the price of
one to three shillings. The Lady's Library ("Spectator" No. 37)
containing beside numerous romances "A Book of Novels" and "The New
Atalantis, with a Key to it," which last Lady Mary Montagu also enjoyed,
and the dissolute country-gentleman's daughters ("Spectator" No. 128)
who "read Volumes of Love-Letters and Romances to their Mother," a
_ci-devant_ coquette, give us perhaps a more accurate idea of the woman
novelist's public. Doubtless Mrs. Haywood's wares were known to the more
frothy minds of the polite world and to the daughters of middle-class
trading families, such as the sisters described in Defoe's "Religious
Courtship," whose taste for fashionable plays and novels was soon to
call the circulating library into being.

Beside the proceeds arising from the sale of her works, Mrs. Haywood
evidently expected and sometimes received the present of a guinea or so
in return for a dedication. Though patrons were not lacking for her
numerous works, it does not appear that her use of their names was
always authorized. In putting "The Arragonian Queen" u