persons capable of detecting their absurdities, Mrs.
Haywood preserved his method of minute fidelity to actual life and still
made her book entertaining to such a connoisseur of fiction as Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu.[13]Though rarely mentioned with entire approbation,
"Betsy Thoughtless" was widely read for fifty years after its
publication,[14] and undoubtedly deserves its place among the best of
the minor novels collected in Harrison's "Novelist's Library."

In the same useful repertory of eighteenth century fiction is the second
of Mrs. Haywood's domestic novels, only less famous than its
predecessor. Like her earlier effort, too, "The History of Jemmy and
Jenny Jessamy" (1753) contains a great number of letters quoted at full
length, though the narrative is usually retarded rather than developed
by these effusions. Yet all the letters, together with numerous
digressions and inserted narratives, serve only to fill out three
volumes in twelves. To readers whose taste for fiction has been cloyed
by novels full of incident, movement, and compression, nothing could be
more maddening than the leisurely footpace at which the story drags its
slow length along. No wonder, then, that Scott recorded his abhorrence
of the "whole Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy tribe," while to Coleridge and
Thackeray "Jemmy Jessamy stuff" was a favorite synonym for the emotional
inane.[15] But Mrs. Haywood made no pretense of interesting such
readers. In the running fire of comment on the narrative contained in
the lengthy chapter headings she confesses that her book "treats only on
such matters as, it is highly probable, some readers will be apt to say
might have been recited in a more laconick manner, if not totally
omitted; but as there are others, the author imagines much the greater
number, who may be of a different opinion, it is judged proper that the
majority should be obliged." She has no hesitation either in
recommending parts of the story that "cannot fail of giving an agreeable
sensation to every honest and good-natured reader," or in sparing him a
"digression of no consequence to the history" which may be "read or
omitted at discretion." But those who love to "read in an easy-chair,
either soon after dinner, or at night just going to rest," will find in
the tale "such things as the author is pretty well convinced, from a
long series of observations on the human mind, will afford more pleasure
than offence."

We have every reason to believ