Although Mrs. Haywood was evidently not responsible for the inclusion of her tale in "The Female Dunciad," and although the piece itself was entirely innocuous, her daring to raise her head even by accident brought down upon her another scurrilous rebuke, not this time from the poet himself, but from her former admirer, Richard Savage.

This edition provides representative texts from Eliza Haywood's career, which overlaps that of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding. The six fictions and two plays provided here illustrate the many kinds of writing she produced, and the ways she treated important themes and issues.