The Dead Letter Office is perhaps the most intriguing title on the list of novels associated with the anonymous author of The Woman of Colour (1808),  A "dead letter office" suggests many exciting plot possibilities. (Should I explain for the kids that this is the department of a post office where undeliverable letters end up?)  The subtitle--A Tale for the English Farmer’s Fireside--also teaches us something about book publishing in Jane Austen’s era, but I’ll get back to that.
     I was not able to read it until I visited England recently and looked at a copy in the British Library. I discovered it is not a novel with a plot built around the dead letter department of a post office. It is a pastiche, a collection of individual letters with no connection to one another except that they all portray folly or greed or vanity. A young man who works at the post office in London visits his aunt, an “antiquated spinster” (who is also the narrator), and shares letters which have ended up in the dead letter office with her. They are intended (naturally) to teach a moral lesson. 
     So we have some miscellaneous writings--what was called, in those days, "fugitive pieces"--including a poem, which could have lain in the author’s desk for years, patched together to eke out a two-volume publication. This author had already produced six novels in seven years for the publisher Benjamin Crosby, but after this title, there was to be only one more, The Splendour of Adversity (1814). The Crosby publishing firm declared bankruptcy in 1814.
​    The "dead letters" account for about half of the content of this two-volume title. The letters are basically mini short stories, similar to the short fiction pieces you will find in periodicals of the era, such as The Lady's Magazine. I won’t give details of all the letters, but here’s a sampling...

     The pseudonymous authoress Mrs. Martha Homely knew that the first unrelentingly weepy and overwrought volume of Maids As They Are is notably different from the livelier scandal-ridden subsequent volumes, and in her foreword she “entreats those who are fatigued at the melancholy of her first volume” to hang in there. Volume Two introduces Lady Lucy and her two sisters, more wickedly captivating than her heroine. Of course they are only there to be held up as a bad example. Of course!
    The story centers around our beautiful and virtuous heroine Theodora Cameron. Actually, the first chapter traces the family line back to the time of good Queen Anne, but the family tree collapses as the authoress dispatches Theodora’s aunt, then her uncle the baronet, then Theodora’s mother, then her father. We’re left with Theodora and her cousin Evelin Cameron, the only remaining male heir to the baronetcy. They are in fact double first cousins, because their fathers are twin brothers (the one who popped out first was the baronet) who married sisters. Their parents intended them for each other from their cradles. No genetic counselors in this little Welsh village, evidently...

      Well, this is yet another novel taking aim at the follies of people in High Society. This three-volume novel lacks plot but is teeming with characters--more characters than you'll want to keep track of or care about. It is also filled with anecdotes of real-life nobility, under pseudonyms like Tumly St. Dragon Skeleton or Sir Jeremy Haphazzard, or ellisions such as Duke of Cl----e or Lady *****.  As an example, I recognized "Miss Linley Short" as the heiress Catherine Tylney Long who turned down a marriage proposal from the impoverished Duke of Clarence, later King William IV. There is also a lengthy section in volume II discussing "Lady Naples," who is none other than Emma, Lady Hamilton, the mistress of Lord Nelson. She is spotted shopping in a jeweler's. “That woman's as big as a whale,” sneers one character, while the other gives a sympathetic version of her life history. I did not chase down any other references.
       How wise Jane Austen was to refrain from this kind of thing. References to the scandals of the day or to famous personages would have dated her novels.
      In other words, this novel purveys gossip, salacious and otherwise, and even features lots of Regency slang. Now, here is the tricky bit--much of the gossip is disguised as not-gossip because it's presented along with moralizing. We're only talking about folly, dissipation, and immorality so as to hold the mirror up to vice, folks!...

    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...