SOURCE: An introduction to Pompey the Little, by Francis Coventry, Oxford University Press, 1974, pp. ix-xxiii.

In the following introduction to his edition of Pompey the Little, Day argues that Coventry's novel was an anomaly among anomalies—an unusual novel in an era when the novel was a non-traditional literary genre.

On 16 February 1752, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote from her Italian exile at Brescia to give her daughter, Lady Bute, the latest news and to thank her for a box of the latest books from London. Lady Mary had begun to read avidly, but was not entirely pleased with her first choices, Peregrine Pickle and The History of Charlotte Summers. Then,

Candles came, and my Eyes grown weary I took up the next Book meerly because I suppos'd from the Title it could not engage me long. It was Pompey the Little, which has really diverted me more than...