Scenes of Life (1805) by Thomas Harral, is my first anti-Jacobin novel, which is surprising, considering that I’ve read about 150 sentimental novels so far. I’ve read some novels that mention the French Revolution, but this is the first novel that really nails its colours to the mast—this was written for the express purpose of combating the pernicious and radical new ideas that threatened to seep across the Channel and poison the traditional virtues of British public and private life.
    The way author Thomas Harral has gone about it, is to write a conventional sentimental novel featuring a brother and sister who lose their father and their fortune, but triumph in the end. Interspersed throughout the story are long editorials from the narrator and several of the male characters as well, who collectively have a lot to say about female education, the dangerous immorality of German plays, and the “trash” from radical writers Thomas Paine, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. As one reviewer explained, the author's intention is “the laudable one of bringing into contempt the ridiculous and disgusting tenets of modern philosophers, as they prevailed a few years ago, when their progress bid fair to overthrow, with the altar and the throne, the moral system of all civilized nations.” The reviewers thought that in 1805, Harral was late to the arena, the crisis was over and the foe vanquished.

    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.
     Because The Wife and the Mistress (1802) is not a satire, Charlton does not get 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 is captivated by the young 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. Laura's childhood takes up much of the first volume.

    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.
  Enraged, 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...​