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Fiction Literary

Love in Excess - Second Edition

by (author) Eliza Haywood

edited by David Oakleaf

Publisher
Broadview Press
Initial publish date
Jun 2000
Category
Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781551113678
    Publish Date
    Jun 2000
    List Price
    $21.25

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Description

Eliza Haywood (1693-1756) was one of the most successful writers of her time; indeed, the two most popular English novels in the early eighteenth-century were Robinson Crusoe and Haywood’s first novel, Love in Excess. As this edition enables modern readers to discover, its enormous success is easy to understand. Love in Excess is a well crafted novel in which the claims of love and ambition are pursued through multiple storylines until the heroine engineers a melodramatic conclusion.

Haywood’s frankness about female sexuality may explain the later neglect of Love in Excess. (In contrast, her accomplished domestic novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, has remained available.) Love in Excess and its reception provide a lively and valuable record of the challenge that female desire posed to social decorum.

For the second Broadview edition, the appendix of eighteenth-century responses to Haywood has been considerably expanded.

About the authors

Eliza Haywood (1693?–1756) was a novelist, bookseller, playwright, editor of periodicals, and occasional actress.

Eliza Haywood's profile page

David Oakleaf's profile page

Editorial Reviews

“This readable edition of Haywood’s blockbuster novel (with Oakleaf’s lively, highly informed introduction and clear judicious textual notes) is an important addition to our understanding of the history of the English novel.” — Paula Backscheider, Auburn University