​     Realities, Not a Novel, a Tale from Real Life (1825) was Anne Raikes Harding’s fourth novel. Her first three were Correction (1818), Decision (1819) and Refugees (1822). Like Mary Brunton, who gave us Self-Control (1811) and Discipline (1814), Harding used a catchy one word title, which presumably signalled to the reading public that her offerings were a type of story known today as a moral-domestic novels. As Harding put it, her novel was “not a tale of wonders and of horrors” with characters who are “monsters of iniquity or monsters of perfection,” but rather a “simple tale of plain truth… written with the hope of… conveying a moral lesson, in a more pleasing form than by stricture or essay.” And what is the moral lesson Mrs. Harding wished to impart? It was “the necessity of subduing our own passions and feelings, and of placing a firm reliance on Divine Providence, however adverse its dispensations may appear.”
   Realities tells the story of Augusta Dunstanville, but in fact this is a thinly-disguised autobiography, albeit of course with some exaggerations, additions and omissions. Was Anne Raikes Harding really caught in a "hurricane" while on a yacht excursion on the Thames, or did the wind merely kick up a bit? Did her uncle really attempt to force her into marriage with a dissolute army officer?
​    As for the moral lesson about subduing the passions and resigning oneself to Providence, I think Mrs. Harding is a deeply conflicted woman. She preaches resignation to the will of Providence, but her passionate anger and resentment over what the Fates handed her is always there, simmering below the surface. The first section, covering her childhood, displays much psychological insight and complexity...

    Here’s another novel which uses the same forced-marriage premise as The Woman of Colour, but to less dramatic effect. Our hero, John Scarsdale, is estranged from his father who is living openly with his mistress while the family baronetcy goes to rack and ruin. Scarsdale travels about the continent and befriends a retired merchant, Mr. Aubrey, who has a lovely daughter. The constraints of the plot mean that Aubrey has no one else in the world to turn too when he falls ill but his youthful new friend. When Mr. Aubrey dies, Scarsdale “promised to supply his place in the guardianship of the young lady… but judge... my astonishment, when on opening his will I found he had bequeathed me the sum of five thousand pounds, and left his daughter the bulk of his fortune, on condition of her marrying her guardian when she was of age, “provided his inclinations were so  conformable.” It turns out his inclinations are conformable. Though he is in his late twenties and Emily is not yet 18, she is everything he would like in a bride...

   I am sharing a research aid for students of The Woman of Colour which itemizes the times when the heroine Olivia Fairfield references her Christian faith. This chart was created by ChatGPT. I asked for this research aid because it appears to me that the Christian message is central to this novel but it has been largely ignored in modern critical commentary, with a few notable exceptions, such as in the work of Victoria Barnett-Woods, Octavia Cox, and Hyewon Ryu. It seems to me that you can't describe this novel accurately, let alone analyze it, without taking into account its strong Christian message.
    You'll notice this author is far more explicit in her Christian faith than, for example, Jane Austen. This particular genre is known as a "moral-domestic" novel, a term popularized by scholar Anthony Mandal. Hilary Haven (Didactic Novels and British Women's Writing, 1790-1820), describes moral domestic novels as "religiously-informed, heroine-centred narratives." That description certainly fits here. Other authors of moral domestic novels included Barbara Hofland, Hannah More and Ann Raikes Harding.
​     For more posts about The Woman of Colour and my research into the anonymous author, click the category "Woman of Colour mystery" to the right.

Method. This working concordance records substantive references in Olivia Fairfield’s correspondence to God, Providence, Christian belief and duty, prayer, worship, Scripture, divine government, resignation, and the afterlife. Page numbers refer to Lyndon J. Dominique’s Broadview edition (2008). The list is intended as a reproducible working aid rather than a claim that every possible biblical echo or conventional religious expression has been counted.

​Summary of the Distribution: The concordance contains over forty substantive passages, depending on whether adjacent statements are combined. The important feature is their distribution: Olivia’s religious language appears from her first letter to her last and occurs during anticipation, danger, courtship, marriage, domestic happiness, catastrophe, forgiveness, and final departure. It is therefore not merely a language generated by the crisis in the latter part of the novel.

Particularly significant comparison. Before the central calamity, Olivia speaks of a “superintending Providence” and asks how she could support herself without her “firm faith in God” (82–83). Later she says that human beings should not question the “dispensations of an all-wise and all-just God” and that afflictions prepare them for “eternal bliss” (161). The editor’s closing appeal to “our most holy faith” and consciousness of a “divine Disposer of Events” is therefore conceptually continuous with Olivia’s repeatedly stated theology.
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Editorial note. This is a working research concordance. Before publication, quotations should be checked directly against the edition used for the article, particularly where OCR or typographical modernization may affect punctuation.

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     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...