Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia

Introduction

1 Biographical Notes

“Unskill’d in Science, in rude Ign’rance bred; Unhappy that I am.”

(Haywood 1742: 262; from a dispute with Scottish poet Walter Bowman of the Hillarian Circle)

“Enjoy the virtues you have so well expressed / Nor blessing others, be thyself unblessed / Believe in jumble innocence thou’lt know / Delights, which pompous vice could never bestow.”

(Haywood 1724: 186; from Letter to the Ingenious RIVERIUS, on his writing in the Praise of Friendship)

Eliza Haywood, neé Fowler, was certainly born in 1693, potentially in London, and perhaps died in Westminster in 1756. During most of her lifetime, England was under Hanoverian rule, although Haywood initially grew up under Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch. ...