​We could say that Laetitia Matilda Hawkins has no one but herself to blame if her novels and essays were erroneously attributed to Eliza Kirkham Mathews. She published anonymously. Her novel Constance (1785) was advertised as “the first literary attempt of a young lady.” Her subsequent collection of essays, titled Pharos (a reference to lighthouses), was advertised as being by the author of Constance, and so on.
    Eliza Kirkham Mathews, by contrast, wanted to put her name on the title page of her novel What Has Been (1801). She had published her first collection of poems under her maiden name of Eliza Kirkham Strong, but when it came to her novel, her brother-in-law advised her against it. He seems to have had doubts about whether the novel would do well and therefore, the safer thing to do would be to publish anonymously. If the book sold well, she could always claim authorship later. However, we know that EKM did in fact write What Has Been  even though her name is not on the title page because (1) the publication of the novel is documented in her husband's biography, (2) it contains poems which had previously been published under her (maiden) name, and (3) she drew on her own life for the plot.
    But since EKM is still being listed as the author for Constance-- a book published when she was 13 years old, we might as well build an objective case for showing why these books were written by two different hands. For this task, I enlisted the help of Artificial Intelligence to study the sentence patterns and grammar. However, I have read both of these novels and am not relying on AI for my conclusions.

    This novel is a moral tale, written to persuade, or rather frighten, young people away from having sex out of wedlock. Sort of a “Reefer Madness,” but for adultery. Summersett's jeremiad is a suitable book to cap off my lengthy series on how novels of the era focused on female virtue--not that I'll be able to stay away from the topic in future book reviews, because so many novels revolve around female virtue.
    Our story begins with a female voice pleading for help, heard outside the humble cottage of Gabriel and Mary Feller. Mary used to be a servant in a posh household, and the daughter of that household was seduced by one Captain Berringer. She flees to Mary to hide her shame and to go insane after she delivers an infant boy. She then drowns herself in the river.
     Baby William is passed off by Gabriel and Mary as their nephew, but strangely, the mother gave him the surname of her seducer, who, everyone agrees, is a loathsome reptile. The rest of volume One is taken up with William’s boyhood, and meeting the girl he marries…

    The Wife and the Lover is not about a wife who has an affair, as I first surmised. “Lover” in this case refers to a unrequited love, or chivalric love. We first meet the darn-near-perfect hero, Sir Edward Harcourt, talking with his guardian and mentor, Lord Fanshaw. Fanshaw warns Sir Edward, who has recently inherited his baronetcy, to think twice before marrying the beautiful and accomplished Cecilia Fitzallard. Lord Fanshaw does not object to the fact that Cecilia does not come from a distinguished family, or have a large fortune; the problem is that she is rather too full of herself, and apt to take offence where none was intended.
     Sir Edward, however, is head-over-heels for Cecilia.
   Lord Fanshaw’s own wife Horatia accidentally proves that the lord had a point; when Horatia makes some joking remarks about Cecilia, which are carried back to her by a character helpfully named Tabitha Wormwood, Cecilia is incensed. She demands that Sir Edward cut off ties to the Fanshaws immediately and forever.
    Our hero can’t do it; he owes the Fanshaws, especially Lord Fanshaw, “both gratitude and esteem." Cecilia, accusing him of not loving her enough, breaks off the engagement. Sir Edward leaves his affairs in the hands of his steward and goes abroad to heal his broken heart.
    Cecilia has many other admirers, including a visiting German count who is a renowned soldier back in the German principality of *****. Count Falkenstein had an “unfavorable opinion” of “women in general, nor could he forbear to express his disapprobation of the freedom which the English ladies, both before and after marriage, enjoyed.”
    A little foreshadowing here: we are told that the count is honorable, brave, handsome, and noble, but he expects unquestioning obedience from a wife. After he and Cecelia are married, he writes to his relatives back in Germany to assure them that she is not like the other outspoken English ladies: “My lovely bride has a just conception of the gentle duties of her sex, and adores that nice sense of honor which cannot tolerate the levity too prevalent in a country where the fair sex enjoy almost unlimited liberty,”
    So, are we setting up for a story where the heroine realizes, too late, that she threw away a wonderful man and rashly married a tyrant? You might think so. You might assume that the narrator is going to take Cecilia’s side in what follows.

    The previous forgotten book I reviewed, The Metropolis, dwelt on the seamier side of London life; the fleshpots of Covent Garden and the propensity of wealthy people to destroy their lives over a game of cards. The next novel I picked up, alas, instantly delved into the same theme, but there is a big difference between the two titles which is worth noting in light of the debates which were raging at that time over the morality and propriety of reading novels.
     The Metropolis received no reviews but if it had, I think the reviewers would have called it a book--to use their phrase--that you could not safely put into the hands of your daughter or sister. It is too detailed in its depiction of vice, and the vices and crimes committed in the book (fornication, gambling, cheating at gambling, highway robbery) are not sufficiently condemned or punished. The Decision (1811), while going over much of the same ground, and in fact including a main character who commits criminal acts, would be safe for a girl to read because it is overtly religious and didactic. A reviewer said: “We trace in these volumes a laudable endeavour to convey as much moral instruction as could be admitted into a work of fancy.” Yes, The Decision is stuffed like a plum pudding with the wholesome raisins of morality. The title refers to the heroine's decision to put her father's wishes ahead of her own, and later, to turn down a fortune in exchange for marriage.
     The Decision begins with a long and confessional letter from Charles Arundel to his old friend Mr. Beverly. Arundel married for love but becomes a gambler and a philanderer. At his dying uncle’s bedside, he sees that he’s been cut out of the will, which would lead to his ruin. He destroys the will and even poisons the uncle. He lives with his guilt until later on in life, after he is widowed, he decides to go to the West Indies and meet the young relative whose father was unknowingly cut out of the will.
    The mention of the West Indies will bring thoughts of slavery to mind for the attentive modern reader, but there is no mention of slavery or colonial exploitation as a sin or even as a cause of remorse in this book--a book which features many people who do things that they regret, such as marrying for ambition. Once again the West Indies are a plot device to remove the father from the action, so the heroine can live with the Beverly family.