212: Eliza Haywood — The Female Spectator and Betsy Thoughtless with Kelly J. Plante
Details of Eliza Haywood’s life may be murky today, but in the early 18th century, she was a literary force—writing plays and bestselling novels, editing periodicals, and ruffling the feathers of male contemporaries like Alexander Pope. Academic Kelly J. Plante joins us this week to discuss Haywood’s anonymous wartime writing for The Female Spectator, the first periodical written by and for women, as well as her 1751 novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless.
Mentioned in this episode:
Kelly J. Plante’s recent scholarship on Eliza Haywood in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Eliza Haywood:
The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless
The Female Spectator: Book 14, Letter 1
Samuel Richardson:
Clarissa; or the History of a Young Lady
Daniel Defoe:
Alexander Pope:
Henry Fielding:
The Sound of Music’s “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”
“The Things We Do For Love” by 10cc
Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 49 on Aphra Behn
A Political Biography of Eliza Haywood by Kathryn R.R. King
Christian Davies (Mother Ross)
John Locke’s tabula rasa
“Eliza Haywood’s Periodicals in Wartime” by Catherine Ingrassia