In 1822, writer Catherine Hutton praised Jane Austen in one of her letters: “her novels are pictures of common life, something like mine, but much more varied; and her character is either something like mine, or what I would wish mine to be.” As a biographer of Hutton notes, the “comparison is apt…. [Hutton] share[s] Austen’s self-described attention to ‘3 or 4 families in a Country village'.”
   The Miser Married, a novel in letters, or epistolary novel, tells the story of what happens when a lively mother-and-daughter team move into a country village and become neighbours to a confirmed miser and misanthrope. Mrs. Mereval and her daughter Catherine are joined by Mrs. Mereval’s niece Emily. We meet the miser through his letters to his man of business, then the lively Catherine takes over with letters to a friend. We learn that she had expected to inherit her late father’s fortune, but a long-lost relative has returned from the East Indies; as a male, he inherits the baronetcy, but he is also entitled to the estate? They are in suspense as the matter works its way through the courts.
    To add to their worries, Catherine and her mother, in anticipation of her inheritance, allowed themselves to live beyond their means and get into debt. They have fled their creditors, which is why they are in this quiet village, and in fact they are living under an assumed name. Their real name is Montgomery...

     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...

​     This is my fifth blog post about Mary Ann Hanway’s Andrew Stuart, or the Northern Wanderer (1800). I wanted to share an interesting episode in this forgotten novel because it echoes an event in the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley and it ties into the War of Ideas which raged in England the 1790s after the French Revolution.
     First, to understand the context: in those days, students and tutors at Cambridge and Oxford had to be Protestant Christians (No Jews or Catholics, thanks) and they had to explicitly subscribe to the 39 Articles, a list of doctrines of the Anglican Church.
    I previously discussed the 39 Articles a few years ago, when discussing whether Jane Austen was critiquing the Anglican Church with her portrait of Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice.
   All right. In the story, our hero Andrew is listening to the extended backstory of his new friend, John Carter, who was enrolled in Cambridge intending to become a clergyman. Carter is the son of a poor but virtuous clergyman and as such, he’s looked down upon by the more posh and wealthy students, such as Lord Buford.  I've trimmed this excerpt down because John Carter is pretty long-winded. Mind you, if you're on a six-months long voyage to India, I suppose it doesn't matter how long it takes to tell a backstory. Take it away, John!...

     In my two-part synopsis of Andrew Stuart (1800), I mentioned that the heroine Isabella improbably gets into a debate about whether novels were good or bad for society--while she is being kidnapped by the burly henchman working for a venal nobleman. In case you were not aware, many people, especially religious or conservative people, mistrusted novels, as I discussed in an earlier series of posts. There was a sort of moral panic around the dangers of novels. Well, this authoress has her characters discuss the dangers of novel-reading in an extended sequence which begins when the burly captor has to rest the horses and get some food at an inn. (He's been instructed to convey Isabella from London all the way to Wales). How will he prevent her for screaming for help when they stop the carriage?