​    Like our previous author, the anonymous author of Cecily Fitz-Owen had a lot he wanted to get off his chest, and so the story of our heroine Cecily’s search for true love is interspersed with much commentary and moralizing on various topics from both the narrator and Cecily's friends the Delameres. Janeites will recall that Austen playfully joked that her novel Pride and Prejudice needed more such digressions:  "it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story: an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparté, or anything that would form a contrast." But she didn't mean it, of course. Austen is not as didactic as other authors, as I've learned. The didactic tone and the overall technique of this novel reminds me of Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife, except that Cecily Fitz-Owen has a little more plot and arguably is better written than Coelebs.
    Another comparison to consider-- are there any intelligent, older people who give excellent advice and admonition to any of our Austen heroines? Mrs. Gardiner comes to mind as playing a small role in that way, but apart from that, I can't think of anything in Austen that's comparable. Leaving out love interest mentors, like Mr. Knightley, that is. 
     With so many digressions, the author has not left much room to devote to Cecily. I’m going to skip over the digressions, the “Sketch of Modern Manners” part, and focus on Cecily Fitz-Owen for now, then get back to the digressions, because they are of social interest.

     We’ve had heroines who were foundlings who turned out to be the daughters of Earls in previous novels, but the heroine of Mystery and Confidence really is a farmer’s daughter who marries an Earl. Ellen Powis really hits the jackpot. Constantine Mordaunt, aka Lord St. Aubyn, loves Ellen for her beauty and good principles. He is an older mentor/lover to her, teaching her about literature and art. But all is not what it seems (cue ominous music). He is haunted by some secret sorrow: “Ask not, inquire not… let me, if possible, forget the dreadful, the hateful subject…”
   The drama of the story takes place after the wedding. Ellen doesn't know that her husband is an earl until after the honeymoon; she thinks he’s simply a wealthy gentleman. Then Pinchard adds in gothic elements such as travelogue sequences, sleepwalking, and a murder mystery. 
    Ellen knows only that her husband had a first wife who died abroad, and every now and then he gets moody, breaks out in exclamations and abruptly leaves the room. Has she married a murderer or something? No, it couldn’t be. She has complete confidence in him, despite the mystery he refuses to unveil...

     I’ll Consider of It! is a strange book, but it’s a refreshing change of pace from all the deadly serious, “virtue under threat” novels that I’ve been reading lately. I should have thought of this sooner—the way to get away from stories where the plot impetus revolves around the chastity of the heroine, is to switch to comedic novels. Jane Austen, for example, wrote comedy.
     Of course, dramatic novels contained some comic leavening, usually provided by a garrulous servant who speaks with a regional accent. And comic authors still inveighed against the follies of the times. The anonymous author of I’ll Consider of It!! weighs in on a lot of topics, such as female education, boarding schools, animal cruelty, unhealthy corseting, and uncharitable people, but it is an essentially light-hearted novel. It was written in imitation of a fabulously successful book which had come out the year before, titled Thinks I to Myself. The narrator and characters keep repeating '"I'll consider of it!" on every other page, which gets tiresome. But the odd thing it, the narrator of I’ll Consider of It frequently interrupts himself to take a poke at Thinks I To Myself. I’ll get back to the strange relationship between TITM and ICoI later.
   First, let’s meet our heroine, Charlotte Clarkson, who lives with her maternal grandfather, General Littlefame, and her widowed mother. The family are neither wealthy nor of high status, but the author arranged that Mrs. Clarkson fortuitously won five thousand pounds in the lottery, which is enough to get by with a single servant and to send Charlotte to a good boarding school. Mrs. Clarkson has high hopes for her lovely daughter…

    This novel is a moral tale, written to persuade, or rather frighten, young people away from having sex out of wedlock. Sort of a “Reefer Madness,” but for adultery. Summersett's jeremiad is a suitable book to cap off my lengthy series on how novels of the era focused on female virtue--not that I'll be able to stay away from the topic in future book reviews, because so many novels revolve around female virtue.
    Our story begins with a female voice pleading for help, heard outside the humble cottage of Gabriel and Mary Feller. Mary used to be a servant in a posh household, and the daughter of that household was seduced by one Captain Berringer. She flees to Mary to hide her shame and to go insane after she delivers an infant boy. She then drowns herself in the river.
     Baby William is passed off by Gabriel and Mary as their nephew, but strangely, the mother gave him the surname of her seducer, who, everyone agrees, is a loathsome reptile. The rest of volume One is taken up with William’s boyhood, and meeting the girl he marries…