Eliza Haywood

Eliza Haywood (about 1693 to 1756) was an English writer, actress and publisher, born Elizabeth Fowler, whose origins and private life remain uncertain to scholars. She wrote and published more than seventy works, including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals, and is studied mainly as one of the eighteenth-century founders of the novel in English. Her first novel, Love in Excess, appeared in 1719 and 1720 and is often classified as amatory fiction, a mode in which she, Delarivier Manley and Aphra Behn were seen as a triumvirate of wit. Her later work turned toward the position of women, and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless in 1751 is a multi-plot novel of female development. Alexander Pope mocked her in The Dunciad, a portrait later critics have questioned.