Introduction

Abstract

This is a book about domestic space and eighteenth-century British novels. More specifically, it is about how interior rooms and garden buildings are represented in the novels of Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) and Fanny Burney (1752–1840), in particular; and to a lesser extent those by Eliza Haywood (1693–1756) and Frances Sheridan (1724–1766). The novels written by Haywood, Sheridan and Burney were all influenced by the work of Richardson; whether directly or indirectly. For instance Sheridan’s Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761) and Burney’s Evelina (1778) are both dedicated to Richardson. His influence is also evident in Haywood’s work. Her satires, Anti-Pamela (1741) and The Virtuous Villager (1742), were written in response to Richardson’s Pamela (1740–1).¹ Meanwhile in The History of Clarissa Harlowe (1747–8) and The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless (1751), Richardson and Haywood respectively explore the fate of a young woman whose reputation is tarnished. But if Richardson’s heroine is an ‘exemplary’ woman,² then Haywood’s is a ‘Thoughtless’ one: a woman whose vanity threatens to turn her into ‘a coquet both silly and insignificant’.³