Eliza Haywood ( Elizabeth Fowler; – 25 February 1756), was an English writer, actress and publisher. Described as "prolific even by the standards of a prolific age", Haywood wrote and published over 70 works in her lifetime, including fiction, drama, translations, poetry, conduct literature and periodicals. Haywood today is studied primarily as one of the 18th-century founders of the novel in English. She is especially famous for her novel Love in Excess (1719–20).
Biography Scholars of Eliza Haywood universally agree upon only one thing: the exact date of her death. Haywood gave conflicting accounts of her own life; her origins remain unclear, and there are presently contending versions of her biography. This author offers a summary of conflicting biographies of Haywood. For example, it was once mistakenly believed that she married the Rev. Valentine Haywood.Whicher, Chapter I, for example. Corrected by Blouch, p. 539. According to report, Haywood took pains to keep her personal life private, asking the one (unnamed) person with knowledge of her private life to remain silent for fear that such facts may be misrepresented in print. Apparently, that person felt loyal enough to Haywood to honour her request.
The early life of Eliza Haywood is somewhat of a mystery to scholars. While Haywood was born "Elizabeth Fowler", the exact date of Haywood's birth is unknown due to the lack of surviving records. Although scholars believe that she was most likely born near Shropshire or London, England, in or around 1693, her birth date is extrapolated from a combination of her death date and her stated age at the time of her death (Haywood died on 25 February 1756 and obituaries notices list her age as sixty years).
Haywood's familial connections, education status, and social position are unknown. Some scholars have speculated that she is related to Sir Richard Fowler of Harnage Grange, who had a younger sister named Elizabeth. Others have stated that Haywood was most likely from London, England as several Elizabeths were born to Fowler families in 1693 in London; however, no evidence exists to positively confirm any of these possible connections. Her first entry in public records appears in Dublin, Ireland, in 1715. In this entry, she is listed as "Mrs. Haywood", performing in Thomas Shadwell's Shakespeare adaptation, Timon of Athens; or, The Man-Hater at the Smock Alley Theatre.Blouch, 536–538. Haywood described herself as a "widow", noting in 1719 that her marriage was "unfortunate", but no record of her marriage has been found and the identity of her husband remains unknown.
Scholars have speculated that Haywood had an affair and even a child with Richard Savage in the 1720s, in addition to a 20-year open relationship with William Hatchett, who was suspected of being the father of her second child. However, later critics have called these speculations into question as too heavily influenced by Alexander Pope's famous illustration of her in The Dunciad and too little based upon evidence. (Pope depicted Haywood as a grotesque figure with two "babes of love" at her waist, one by a poet and the other by a bookseller.) Other accounts from the period, however, suggest that her "friends" rejected Pope's scandalous depiction of her; they maintained that she had been deserted by her husband and left to raise their children alone. In fact, and despite the popular belief that she was once a woman of ill repute, Haywood seems to have had no particular scandals attached her name whatsoever.
Haywood's friendship with Richard Savage is thought to have begun around 1719. Savage wrote the gushing 'puff' for the anonymous Part I of her first novel, Love in Excess. The two appear to have been close in these early years, sharing many associates in literary and theatrical circles, even sharing the same publisher, William Chetwood. By September 1725, however, Savage and Haywood had fallen out, and he anonymously attacked her as a 'cast-off Dame' desperate for acclaim in The Authors of the Town. Savage is considered the likely impetus for Pope's attack on Haywood.
Haywood's association with Aaron Hill and the literary coterie known as The Hillarians seems to have followed a similar pattern as Haywood rose to fame. The Hillarians, a collection of writers and artists "committed to a progressive programme of ameliorating 'politeness'", included Savage, Hill, Martha Fowke, and for a time, Haywood. The group shared poems to and about each other, and formed a social circle of like minds. Haywood seems to have greatly admired Hillwho, though not a patron, seems to have promoted young, up-and-coming artistsand dedicated poems to him. She may have even seen him as a mentor during the earliest years of her career.
William Hatchett was a long-time colleague and collaborator. The two probably met around 1728 or 1729, and recent critics have touted the pair as domestic partners or lovers, though this suggestion has now been challenged. He was a player, playwright, pamphleteer and translator (and perhaps "sponge") who shared a stage career with Haywood, and they collaborated on an adaptation of The Tragedy of Tragedies by Henry Fielding (with whom she also collaborated) and an opera, The Opera of Operas; or, Tom Thumb the Great (1733). They also may have collaborated on a translation of Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon's Le Sopha in 1742. Hatchett has even been seen as the father of Haywood's second child (based on Pope's reference to "a Bookseller" as a father of one of her children, though Hatchett was not a bookseller.) No clear evidence supporting this or a domestic partnership is extant.
Haywood's long writing career began in 1719 with the first instalment of Love in Excess, a novel, and ended in the year she died with the conduct books The Wife and The Husband and contributions to the biweekly periodical The Young Lady. She wrote in almost every genre, often anonymously. Haywood is now considered "the foremost female 'author by profession' and businesswoman of the first half of the eighteenth century", tireless and prolific in her endeavours as an author, poet, playwright, periodical writer and editor, and publisher. During the early 1720s, "Mrs Haywood" dominated the novel market in London, so much so that contemporary Henry Fielding created a comic character, "Mrs. Novel", in The Author's Farce, modelled after her.
Haywood fell ill in October 1755 and died on 25 February 1756, actively publishing up to her death. She was buried in Saint Margaret's Church near Westminster Abbey in an unmarked grave in the churchyard. For unknown reasons, her burial was delayed by about a week.
Acting and drama
Haywood began her acting career in 1715 at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. Public records for this year list her as "Mrs. Haywood," appearing in Thomas Shadwell's Shakespeare adaptation, Timon of Athens; or, The Man-Hater.
By 1717, she had moved to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where she worked for John Rich. Rich had her rewrite a play called The Fair Captive. The play only ran for three nights (to the author's benefit), but Rich added a fourth night as a benefit for the second author, Haywood. In 1723, her first play, A Wife to be Lett, was staged.
In the later 1720s, Haywood continued acting, moving over to the Haymarket Theatre to join Henry Fielding in the opposition plays of the 1730s. In 1729, she wrote the tragedy Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburgh to honour Frederick, Prince of Wales. George II's son was later a locus for Patriot Whig and Tory opposition to the ministry of Robert Walpole. As he made it clear that he did not favour his father's policies or ministry, praise for him was a demurral. However, when Haywood wrote the play, it is likely that she was still aiming to secure the patronage of the whole royal family, including Queen Caroline, as the royal split had yet to occur.Kathryn R. King, A Political Biography of Eliza Haywood. Routledge, 2015, pp. 56–58. Others, such as James Thomson and Henry Brooke, were also writing such "patriotic" plays (i. e. supportive of the Patriot Whigs) at the time, and Henry Carey would soon satirise the failed promise of George II.
Haywood's greatest Haymarket success came in 1733, with The Opera of Operas, an adaptation of Fielding's Tragedy of Tragedies with music by J. F. Lampe and Thomas Arne). However, it was an adaptation with a sharp difference. Caroline of Ansbach had affected a reconciliation between George I and George II, which meant an endorsement by George II of the Whig ministry. Haywood's adaptation contains a reconciliation scene, replete with symbols from Caroline's own grotto. This enunciated a change in Haywood herself, away from any Tory or anti-Walpolean causes she had supported previously. It did not go unnoticed by her contemporaries.
In 1735, Haywood wrote a Companion to the Theatre. The volume contains plot summaries of contemporary plays, literary criticism, and dramaturgical observations. In 1747 she added a second volume.
After the Licensing Act 1737, the playhouse was shut against adventurous new plays such as hers.
Fiction Haywood, Delarivier Manley and Aphra Behn were seen as "the fair triumvirate of wit" and major writers of amatory fiction. Haywood's prolific works moved from titillating romance novels to the amatory during the early 1720s to works, focusing more on "women's rights and position" (Schofield, Haywood 63) in the later 1720s into the 1730s. In the middle novels of her career, women would be locked up, tormented and beleaguered by domineering men, but in the later ones of the 1740s and 1750s marriage became a positive move for men and for women.
Due to the system for paying authors in 18th-century publishing, Haywood's novels often ran to multiple volumes. Authors would be paid only once for a book and receive no royalties: a second volume meant a second payment.
Haywood's first novel, Love in Excess; Or, The Fatal Enquiry (1719–1720) touches on education and marriage. Often classified as a work of amatory fiction, this novel is notable for its treatment of the fallen woman. D'Elmonte, the novel's male protagonist, reassures one woman that she should not condemn herself: "There are times, madam", he says "in which the wisest have not power over their own actions." The fallen woman is given an unusually positive portrait.
Idalia; or The Unfortunate Mistress (1723) divides into three parts. In the first, Idalia appears as a young motherless, spoiled, yet wonderful Venetian aristocrat, whose varied amorous adventures carry her over most of Italy. Already in Venice she is sought by countless suitors, among them the base Florez, whom her father forbids the house. One suitor, Florez's friend Don Ferdinand, resigns his suit, but Idalia's vanity is piqued at the loss of an even a single adorer, and more from perverseness than from love continues to correspond with him. They meet, and he eventually effects her ruin. His beloved friend Henriquez conducts her to Padua, but also falls for her charms. He quarrels with Ferdinand and they eventually kill each other in a duel.
In the second part, Henriquez' brother, Myrtano, succeeds as Idalia's principal adorer, and she reciprocates. She then receives a letter informing her of Myrtano's engagement to another woman, and so she leaves for Verona, hoping to enter a convent. On the road her guide takes her to a rural retreat with the intention of killing her, but she escapes to Ancona, from where she takes ship for Naples. The sea captain pays crude court to her, but just in time to save her from his embraces, the ship is captured by corsairs commanded by a young married couple. Though the heroine is in peasant dress, she is treated with distinction by her captors. Her history moves them to tears and they in turn are in the midst of relating to Idalia an involved story of their courtship when the vessel is wrecked in a gale.