Davys, or cast
mistresses like Mme de Villedieu, Mile de La Force, and Mrs. Manley, who
cultivated Minerva when Venus proved unpropitious. But although the
divine Astraea won recognition from easy-going John Dryden and
approbation from the profligate wits of Charles II's court, her memory
was little honored by the coterie about Pope and Swift. When even the
lofty ideals and trenchant style of Mary Astell served as a target for
the ridicule of Mr. Bickerstaff 's friends,[2] it was not remarkable
that such authoresses as Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Haywood should be
dismissed from notice as infamous scribbling women.[3] Inded
[Transcriber's note: sic] the position of women novelists was anything
but assured at the beginning of the eighteenth century. They had to
support the disfavor and even the malign attacks of established men of
letters who scouted the pretensions of the inelegant to literary fame,
and following the lead of Boileau, discredited the romance as absurd and
unclassical. Moreover, the moral soundness of fictitious fables was
questioned by scrupulous readers, and the amatory tales turned out in
profusion by most of the female romancers were not calculated to
reassure the pious, even though prefaced by assertions of didactic aim
and tagged with an exemplary moral. Nevertheless the tribe of women who
earned their living chiefly by the proceeds of their pens rapidly
increased.[4]

Mrs. Haywood, as we have seen, looked to the booksellers for support
when her husband disclaimed her. Of all the amazons of prose fiction who
in a long struggle with neglect and disparagement demonstrated the
fitness of their sex to follow the novelist's calling, none was more
persistent, more adaptable, or more closely identified with the
development of the novel than she. Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Manley must be
given credit as pioneers in fiction, but much of their best work was
written for the stage. Eliza Haywood, on the other hand, added little to
her reputation by her few dramatic performances. She achieved her
successes first and last as a writer of romances and novels, and unlike
Mrs. Aubin and her other rivals continued to maintain her position as a
popular author over a considerable period of time. During the thirty-six
years of her activity the romances of Defoe and of Mrs. Jane Barker gave
place to the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, yet the
"female veteran" kept abreast of the changes in the taste of her public
and even