A Winter in London (1806) by Thomas Skinner Surr is a peculiar blend of a novel, with a melodramatic quasi-gothic plot awkwardly rubbing shoulders with celebrity gossip and social criticism. By quasi-gothic, I mean that there is nothing supernatural in the plot, but there is treachery, a villainous foreigner, anti-clericalism, titillating hints of incest narrowly averted, and a dungeon or two. The young hero, Edward Montagu, is a foundling.
    The handy thing about a Georgian-era foundling narrative is that you can show the foundling as a plucky and virtuous character struggling to find their way in a society based on birth and rank rather than merit, but, in the Big Reveal of True Parentage, you can explain that the foundling IS actually of good birth! Their good looks, excellent character and intelligence had to come from somewhere, after all. 
     Are novels about foundlings an attempt to subvert the social order, or does the Big Reveal reinforce the social order? Is this a way of having your cake and eating it too?
     Tom Jones, the foundling in Fielding’s 1749 novel, is of illegitimate birth but other foundlings such as Edward Evilen (1796) or Rosalie in the Mystic Cottager of Chamouny (1795) and Edward Montague of A Winter in London all have married parents who have been separated through some combination of bad luck and perfidy. The Big Reveal comes about as a result of amazing coincidence: the lovely Rosalie strums her guitar in the Swiss Alps until the one person in the world she wasn't supposed to meet seeks lodging in her remote cottage. Edward Montagu is raised in a cottage within sight of his true ancestral home.  He accidentally meets his father--who wrongly thinks his wife, Edward's mother, was unfaithful to him--while they are both roaming moodily around the neighbourhood...  

    Isabella and Catherine are binge-reading gothic novels in Bath, a popular pastime when Jane Austen wrote her first draft of Northanger Abbey. Because of the long delay before its actual publication in 1817, Austen felt compelled to note in her foreword that "thirteen years have passed since it was finished, many more since it was begun, and that during that period, places, manners, books, and opinions have undergone considerable changes."
    A hundred years later, Isabella Popp tells us, Isabella's seven horrid novels had fallen into such obscurity that they "were often presumed to be invented by Austen." In 1927, "Michael Sadleir, a British publisher, novelist, and book collector, located copies of all seven novels." The last one to surface was Orphans of the Rhine.
    This should be a reminder to us that prior to our digital age, finding copies of rare old book was a much more difficult and expensive challenge. Thanks to the internet and thanks to digitization, hundreds of these spine-chilling 18th-century novels are readily available, either for purchase or through your local university or community library.
​     You can also dive into the world of the gothic novel thanks to Professor Ann B. Tracy and her reference book: The Gothic Novel 1790-1830: Plot Summaries and Index to Motifs. 

   Ostentation and Liberality, an 1821 novel by Arabella Argus, caught my eye because of the title, which is obviously in the tradition of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
    And, one of the main characters is a Mr. Austen, a widower who is raising his daughter with the help of a governess. Naturally I wondered if this was a posthumous tribute to Jane Austen.
   Ostentation and Liberality is a didactic book aimed at young people and/or their parents. The central conflict is the governess’s efforts to raise her pupil to be virtuous and good. Will Frances grow up to be like her frivolous, heartless, cousins, or will she emulate Miss Colville’s former pupil, the benevolent Lady Jane? A young man is introduced into the narrative, but there is no romance.
   Arabella Argus is a pseudonym. We don’t know the author's life dates because we don’t know who Arabella Argus was. We don't even know if Argus was a female, or one person. Her books were published and re-issued between 1810 and 1835, according to the Women's Print History Project. “Argus” is a reference to a figure from Greek mythology, an all-seeing giant covered with eyes.
  If you're an Austenite, read on to see if you can spot some Emma similarities in this book...