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...

CMP#261   Book Review: The Banks of the Wye: or, Two Summers at Clifton (1808)​

​     The Banks of the Wye is one of 21 novels in the attribution chain involving the 1808 novel The Woman of Colour. This is a novel which has ben speculated about and commented on in academic circles because it was so unusual to have a mixed-race protagonist in a novel of this era.
     For more about the attribution chain (“by the author of”) and how it relates to the mystery of who wrote The Woman of Colour, click here. I was not able to read The Banks of the Wye when I was reading my way through the other novels earlier this year, because it is not digitized. Last month, however, I visited England and spent several mornings reading it in one of the peaceful and sedate Reading Rooms of the British Library.
      Now that I’ve read every book in the attribution chain but one (Fedaretta), I would nominate The Banks of the Wye as the best-written of the 21 novels, with The House That Jack Built as a close second. The anonymous authoress sustains her story through four volumes. She sets up her major plot points with skilful foreshadowing, telling us the story of a young bride named Teresa who went astray, and then reiterating her doom in the life of her granddaughter. She handles a lot of characters and sub-plots and keeps them all in motion. It was a frequent fault of novelists of this time to introduce a gallery of crazy characters just for the sake of having crazy characters—such as, an assortment of people at a vacation resort. The Banks of the Wye’s comic characters are not there just to be ridiculous; they play some part in the plot. My favourite is Miss Patience Perkyns, a woman on the wrong side of thirty who haunts vacation spots in search of a husband and makes a lot of noise about her maiden virtue. 

    Mary Ann Hanway, a contemporary of Jane Austen, made her feelings clear about English involvement in the slave trade in her novel Andrew Stuart, the Northern Wanderer (1800), which I reviewed here. As I read and review the forgotten novels of the long eighteenth century, I always flag any mentions of slavery or the slave trade for the convenience of other researchers or readers who may be interested. The numerous examples I've found put paid to the notion that novelists such as Jane Austen couldn't touch on controversial topics. Specifically, it was not controversial to openly express abolitionist sentiments in your novel. 
    If it had been controversial for a female to speak up against the slave trade, you would think that the critics who reviewed these novels would have said so. I have yet to find a single example of this. Andrew Stuart was praised and well received in its day and the editorial against the slave trade is not mentioned in the reviews--because it was not at all unusual or objectionable. The European Review singled out “the very affecting story of Amantha” in Andrew Stuart for particular notice in its lengthy review, but did not mention the editorial against slavery embedded in that subplot.
    The excerpt below is from the backstory of the fair but unfortunate Amantha, who is asking for help from a wealthy noblewoman, and is relating the full story of her parents' marriage and her childhood. In her narrative, we learn that Amantha's father, wishing to provide for his family, takes a position serving on a ship deployed to Africa. 

   I first learned about the anti-Jacobins and the culture war that raged between supporters of the French Revolution versus the conservative old guard in Marilyn Butler’s important book, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975). 
  Jacobins were one of the revolutionary groups that turned France upside down during the Reign of Terror which followed the overthrow of the monarchy. The British establishment and of course, many ordinary patriotic Britons, were worried about revolutionary fervor spreading across the Channel. While progressives such as Tom Paine hailed the reform (or overthrow) of organized religion, primogeniture, and the aristocracy, conservative-minded folk also picked up their quill pens to defend the status quo. Some founded The Anti-Jacobin Review to warn about the dangers of political radicalism. This included castigating French philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire, and German writers like Goethe and Kotzbue. Once you delve into the back and forth, there is a shock of recognition--it’s comparable to the cultural and political wars raging today.
    Conservatives (and I am using the word as a descriptor, not a slur) saw not only a political threat but a threat to established social customs. They particularly feared any liberalization of divorce laws or any whiff of what today we would call feminism. Some authors used satire and ridicule  to combat progressive ideas, notably Elizabeth Hamilton in her Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800). In the example below, the author of Scenes of Life used the direct attack to condemn the new radicalism and progressivism.