Chawton House, the center for early women's writing and former home of Jane Austen's wealthy brother, has made a number of obscure novels available for study on their website. You would think that scholars would fall on a novel entitled ​Yamboo, or, the North American Slave, like a duck on a June bug. But no, they are too busy studying attitudes toward slavery by poring over Mansfield Park. Too bad there are no actual enslaved persons in Mansfield Park and slavery is never discussed, let alone condemned.
   How about looking at an 1812 novel which actually has an enslaved person as the titular character? Yamboo's anti-slavery message is far more explicit than Mansfield Park and serves as yet another refutation of the notion that authors, particularly women authors, couldn't talk about slavery back then. 
     Leaving aside the literary merits of the book and focusing on its message, we can say this in favour of Yamboo:

• The novel strongly asserts the titular character’s humanity.
• It confronts the issues of racial as well as class prejudice.
• Yamboo is portrayed as having agency; that is, he acts and is not merely acted upon...

   ​   In previous posts, I've looked at the forgotten novel Fanny Fitz York (1818) in terms of its plot, its female characters. and the moral and political opinions the characters express. In this post, we're going to the theatre and dealing with some other bits and pieces.
         Lady Ann, the mother of the heroine, carefully safeguards her daughter's morals.  When they are invited to take in a play, Lady Ann asks if the actors are any good, then asks: "And the piece-- is it a moral one?” When she is assured it is “Unexceptionable,” she decides to take a box. “The young folks no doubt will be highly gratified, and if, as you say, the play is unexceptionable, improved. The drama, under proper restrictions, would not merely be an innocent amusement, but a very high source of edification…”
      ​   It's not surprising that Anne Ryley has opinions about the theatre. Her husband, S.W. Ryley, was an itinerant actor and comedian, and she herself trod the boards as a young wife. No doubt the scenes described in Fanny Fitz-York are based on Ann Ryley's real experiences playing in front of rowdy Georgian audiences.
     On this first trip to the theatre, young Fanny is enthralled by everything. She pays “close attention to the performance,” which draws the sarcastic attention of other theatre-goers, because “any attention to Shakespeare, or those whose acting is his brightest illustration, is an offence so barbarous, vulgar, and unfashionable, that it is universally rated a bore…” 
         Fanny and her friends go to the theatre and the opera frequently in Fanny Fitz-York, and some little incident always occurs. Author Ann Ryley has thoughts about noisy, inattentive theatre patrons...

      In the last post, I gave a run down of Bear and Forbear, a novella for girls, in which the heroine Julia Marchmont meekly endures both the snobbish cruelty of her in-laws and the false accusations of her husband. 
     Bear and Forbear was one of four novellas by a "Miss Woodland," which were “intended to illustrate the force of education, and the dangers of mistakes in the commencement of life.” Bear and Forbear preaches that wives should be gentle, good-humoured, and accommodating if they want to be happy in life. The other three books focus on a particular failing: the dangers of indolence, the dangers of excessive pride, and the dangers of partiality, that is, favouring one child over another. ​ 
       The publishing history of these four novellas indicates that they were re-issued and more widely read in the early part of the 19th century than the novels of Jane Austen. The publisher even paid for engraved frontispieces for all the books.
      So who was Miss M. Woodland, the now-forgotten author of these four novellas? Was she an evangelical like the Rev. Fordyce or Hannah More? Who published this kind of finger-waggy didactic stuff for children?  Well, the answer quite surprised me.
        Bear and Forbear and the other three novellas were first published by children’s book publisher Benjamin Tabart. Tabart went bankrupt in 1810 and five years later, another publisher, M.J. Godwin, published all four tales separately and together as one volume. American editions came out in 1827.
        Who was M.J. Godwin? Why am I surprised?...