Eliza Haywood, ‘The Fortunate Foundlings

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The Fortunate Foundlings was one of Eliza Haywood’s more successful novels, though it remains one of her lesser known works. Ittells the story of a brother and sister left as babies in the care of a gentleman. Like many another eighteenth-century foundling, the siblings leave their guardian behind and make their own way in the world: Horatio as a soldier and Louisa as a lady’s companion, finding love and adventure in the battlefields and courts of Europe. Haywood uses the Continental setting to explore different customs–especially those that might benefit women–and different political choices.

Also published here for the first time is her anonymous pamphlet of 1750, A Letter from H— G—g, Esq., ostensibly a letter from Charles Edward Stuart’s aide-de-camp, travelling with him after the prince’s expulsion from France. Seemingly a straightforward expression of Jacobite sympathies, it also encodes support for the Patriot cause of the 1740s and ‘50s.

Both works were translated and adapted, having an extended afterlife in the writings of Crebillon fils, Edward Kimber and Robert Louis Stevenson. They add to our expanding sense of the author’s range, influence and political agenda.