I’ve read 100 novels of the long 18th century, and William Herbert’s Ella Rosenberg is a strong candidate for the worst. Thankfully it's short--only two volumes, and most of volume one is taken up with a separate tale which has nothing to do with the main plot. I wouldn’t even bother to write up a synopsis of this novel, except that I had promised to make note of any novel which featured a "fallen woman" who did not subsequently die, and—oops, that’s a plot spoiler. Anyway.
    Ella Rosenberg is a semi-historical melodrama set amidst jealous and bickering German nobility. It’s a Romeo-and-Juliet tale about Harold, who rescues a girl from drowning when her carriage veers in to a canal. He promptly falls madly in love with her, and then he destroys her life. That is, he insists on pressing his suit, and will not listen to his father’s very good advice to establish his military career and grow up a bit, before he thinks about marrying. No, instead, Harold takes his dad’s money, goes AWOL, stalks Ella at her family’s country retreat, enrages her father, a powerful Baron, and pressures Ella to elope with him...  

    Well, lately we’ve had novel after novel which focusses on heroines guarding their chastity at all costs.  There were some other implicit values for female behaviour, and they feature in the following two novels, one of which Austen read, and another she might have read. These strictures are: (1) never complain about your husband and (2) never, ever confess your love to a man before he's said he loves you.
    Susan, a novel, author unknown, was published in 1809 by J. Booth. Scholars surmise that the appearance of this novel spurred Jane Austen to write the publisher Benjamin Crosby, who had purchased the manuscript of her novel Susan to ask him, when was he going to publish her novel? He, or rather his son Richard, replied that they owned the manuscript, they were under no obligation to publish it, and she could have the rights back by refunding the ten pounds she'd received for the manuscript. The matter rested for a few years more until Henry Austen, Jane's brother, paid the ten pounds and then informed Crosby that the manuscript he had spurned was by the author of the well-received novels Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.
​   So we might expect that Jane Austen at least looked at the novel Susan. She also changed the name of her heroine from Susan to Catherine. But her novel was not published until after her death, as Northanger Abbey.
    But first, let's look at a novel which we're pretty sure Austen read, because she joked about it in another one of her letters: Margiana, or Widdrington Tower (1808), by Mrs. Sykes.

​          My latest article in Jane Austen's Regency World magazine (Jan/Feb 2024 issue) concerns the novel First Impressions by Margaret Holford. As devoted Janeites know, First Impressions was Austen's original title for Pride and Prejudice, and it's generally thought she changed the title because Holford's novel came out first, in 1801. ​Perhaps, having heard of the novel, Austen got her hands on a copy, to see how it compared with her own unpublished work. I think there are indications in Pride and Prejudice that Austen indeed read and drew some inspiration from First Impressions. For that matter, astute Janeites will spot a slight similarity between the opening of the novel, which I quoted above, and the opening of another Austen novel. But I won't take that up in this post. Instead, here's a plot synopsis. You'll see that this novel continues our theme of girls who must fight to preserve their virtue. The titillation of the tale arises from the perils to which Maria is exposed, and the moral lessons arise from the lengths to which our heroine will go to preserve her virgin honour.
​      Holford's First Impressions is a four volume novel, and although the action drags a bit in the middle as we suffer along with the heroine through her various vicissitudes, I have to say it starts out with a bang--Holford wastes no time in setting up her heroine to be both penniless and friendless. Her plight is not a very good reflection on the foresight of her late guardian, Madame de Vaublanc, when it comes to estate planning. We have to assume that good old lady didn’t realize her cousin and executor was dishonest and corrupt, although the fact that his name is “Gripe” should have tipped off any cautious woman...

     Charlotte Summers “is perhaps the earliest prototype of this story of the lost daughter," says scholar Ruth Perry. In this novel you can find the themes and tropes which preoccupied British literature for the next century. In fact, this type of novel was thoroughly satirized by the writer Robert Charles Maturin in an article for the British Critic. This plot seems to have predominated in the latter half of the 17th century:

• Friendless, orphaned girl is thrown upon an uncaring world. Her backstory involves a lot of bad luck and death.
• She is beautiful, accomplished, devout, and virtuous.
• She fends off unwanted male attention, up to and including assault.
• She is pressured to accept an unwanted suitor, or is accused of trying to ensnare a man.
• She turns down a marriage proposal from a suitor who is much beneath her in education, intelligence, or social standing.  
• Despite her perilous or lowly condition, she refuses to marry for money, or give her hand without her heart.
• Other women are jealous and behave spitefully towards her.
• She gets into trouble with the law although she is completely innocent.
• She has to move from place to place when her situation becomes untenable.
• A happy coincidental reunion restores her to her family or to her familial rights.
• She marries the man she loves.

     Charlotte Summers may be the fortunate parish girl but her good fortune is very much checkered, as she checks all the boxes above. And even though I've just told you the plot of the book (and the plots of many other books), I'll give you a synopsis anyway. There are also some interesting questions of style, language and message to consider...