SOURCE: Introduction to The Adventures of Rivella, by Mary de la Rivière Manley, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1972, p. 120.

In the essay below, Bosse offers a concise appraisal of Manley's autobiographical novel The Adventures of Rivella, which he regards as a moving and realistic work.

The Adventures of Rivella was hastily written by Mary Manley, according to the publisher Edmund Curll, to offset and possibly forestall the publication of a philippic directed against her by Charles Gildon, which he was apparently composing at Curll's instigation.¹ In her fictionalized autobiography she avoids defending her performance as a political writer and seeks instead to justify her behavior as a woman.

Born the daughter of Sir John Manley, a loyalist who served from 1667 to 1672 as Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey, she never achieved her rightful social status, possibly because early in her life and continuing until her death Mary Manley was involved in a...