I was happy to crack open another novel by Mary Charlton because, of all the novelists of this era that I’ve read so far, her style most resembles Jane Austen. That is, some Austenesque free indirect narration and a wry sense of humour is on display in her gothic satire, Rosella, which I’ve reviewed here. However, because The Wife and the Mistress (1802) is not a satire, Charlton does not have an opportunity to deploy her wit as well as she did in Rosella. There is some dark, slashing satire aimed at the decadent noblemen and women at the heart of the story.       
   The heroine of The Wife and the Mistress is neither the wife nor the mistress; Laura Delaunie is the daughter of the Mistress, who is discarded and paid off by Lord Bellingham when he prepares for his marriage to the daughter of Lady Melville, a scheming society woman. I was surprised at how sympathetically the mistress was portrayed. She does not go off to die of misery and remorse. She withdraws to a quiet village, starts her life over, gets married, and is even accepted by her husband’s family because she gently curbs his financial irresponsibility. She brings up her daughter Laura in the path of virtue and gives her a good education as well. So the Mistress is treated gently by the author while mother-in-law Lady Melville is the villain of the piece...

    In March of 1807, publisher Benjamin Crosby was incensed with a rival publisher, J.F. Hughes. Just as Crosby was bringing out A Winter in Bath, his own entry into the fashionable “Season” novel genre, Hughes advertised a book with the copy-cat title A Winter at Bath. In fact, Crosby accuses Hughes of using the same title, A Winter in Bath, but I don't know if Hughes ever advertised his version or sold it under any other title than A Winter AT Bath.
  At any rate, Crosby took out large advertisements, threatening to sue Hughes. Hughes just laughed in return. His novel was from the “chaste and classical pen of Mrs. Bayfield,” and he questioned why A Winter in Bath was advertised merely as being “by the author of two popular novels.” Why so coy, Crosby? Hughes’s advertisements said things like: “Mrs. Bayfield disclaims all connection with an Anonymous Publication, of nearly the same title; and the Publisher invites the Public to read both competitions, and judge,” or “Be careful to ask for Mrs. Bayfield’s as there is another without the Author’s name.”

    The following year, Hughes brought out another “season” novel, City Nobility, or, A Summer at Margate, and, just to wind Crosby up even more, he advertised it as being by the author of “two popular novels.” With sneer quotes, even. Oh Hughes, you scamp.
    Hughes often used copy-cat author’s names or titles to trick the public into thinking they were buying a novel by a best-selling authoress like Frances Burney or Ann Radcliffe, or a famous gothic novel like The Monk. His business didn’t prosper in any event, because he declared bankruptcy more than once and he seems to have made enemies in the publishing community.
    At any rate, I thought I would read City Nobility or a Summer at Margate, whether or not its author actually had already written two popular novels...​

   For some months now, I've been churning my way through 21 novels, novels which may or may not have been written by the same anonymous author who wrote The Woman of Colour (1808) To recap, The Woman of Colour has attracted a lot of attention in academic circles because the protagonist is a mixed-race Jamaican heiress, instead of the usual blue-eyed, auburn-haired heroine of this era. My review of the novel is here. I thought that discovering the author of this significant anonymous work might be a very fun quest.
    Most of the academic enquiry into The Woman of Colour does not center around the quality of the writing, but around the historical and political implications of a novel from 1808 featuring a mixed-race heroine. Only one group of scholars, so far as I am aware, have attempted to seek out the author by analyzing the text and comparing it with other texts. The results were amusing, because the "stylometric" software declared that Jane Austen was a likely candidate! And no, absolutely not. If the program can't tell the difference between Austen's sublime, sarcastic prose and the--let's be honest here--absolutely average prose stylings in The Woman of Colour, then the software is useless. 
       There are two, or should I say three, main candidates for authorship of The WOC. I had hoped that by reading the novels, I would find the distinctive fingerprint of the author. While it's been interesting, it has not been definitive. I have concluded that many of the novels were written by the same person, especially the later novels, but the texts themselves did not provide evidence as to the identity of the author...​

     I'm sharing this information with anyone who might be researching The Woman of Colour and the attribution chain of 21 anonymous novels from six different publishers. This is one tangled attribution chain, and it's been difficult to visualize it. I hope this helps.
​     The first table gives the titles by genre, and by whether they are epistolary or narrative. I have not been able to read the early novel Federetta, so I can't confirm it's genre. By genre, I am distinguishing between books which are straightforward marriage-plot novels, and those that, like The Woman of Colour, don't have a conventional happy ending. As you can see, the earlier novels are mostly sentimental novels, while many of the later novels feature a heroine who is not married at the conclusion of the story. This includes, of course, The Woman of Colour. Many of the later use the "good girl/bad girl" approach, with the heroine finding happiness and her heedless friend or sister running into disaster. The Woman of Colour and one other novel are written in epistolary style. The Dead Letter Office, which is a pastiche book, not a single novel, also contains many letters which are not connected together into a single plot. A novella included in the volume, A Tale for the English Farmer's fireside, is a good girl/bad girl story. but not epistolary, so I have categorized The Dead Letter Office as a good girl/bad girl story.
    The "by the Author of" column shows the books published earlier which are referenced on the title page of each book. The second column shows the novels which later referenced the title on their own title pages.
      The second graphic shows more clearly the fact that Light and Shade (1803) is the linchpin on the attribution chain. It is the only novel that has the older titles on its "by the author page." Then it's like a new chain starts, only referencing the titles published in 1803 and after.
    There are many mysteries. Why no attributions on the title page of The Aunt and the Niece? And why did the publisher, Crosby, merely say that A Winter in Bath was from the author of "two popular novels" instead of being specific? And if one woman wrote all the Crosby novels in the latter part of the table, why didn't Crosby publish A Woman of Colour? Why did it go to a different publisher? Crosby acknowledged the existence of the novel in later attributions.
   For those not aware, the Crosby publishing house was more prestigious than the Minerva publishing house.

     I've read and reviewed most of the novels in this chain. Sorry I was not able to link each title to my review, but if you click on the category "The Woman of Colour mystery" at upper right, you can see all the relevant posts. Update: I fixed some errors in my attribution chart. There are six different publishers, not five.