SOURCE: "Eliza Haywood and the Romance of Obscurity," in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 31, No. 3, Summer, 1991, pp. 535-52.

In the following essay, Blouch discussess Haywood's relative biographical and critical obscurity.

The closest Eliza Haywood ever got to Poet's Corner was an unmarked grave within a stone's throw of it. The prolific early novelist lies buried in St. Margaret's parish churchyard, now covered by the extensive manicured lawn adjacent to Westminster Abbey and to the poets whose reputations she never equaled.¹

Haywood's works have suffered a similarly unremarked fate. The purpose of this article is to initiate an investigation that will provide accurate biographical parameters for Haywood's often-obscured career, and secondarily to suggest some of the ways that biographical questions intersect with critical issues. Little is known about Haywood's biography, and brief as it is, a good part of the received account has proved inaccurate. The general location...