Sarah Fielding was one of the most respected women authors of her generation and a key figure in the development of the novel. She was admired especially by Samuel Richardson, who famously commented that her ‘knowledge of the human heart’ was greater than that of her brother, the novelist Henry Fielding. This edition revives The Countess of Dellwyn, the only one of Sarah Fielding’s major works not previously available in a modern scholarly edition. The novel is satirical and didactic, taking as its targets fashionable life and modern marriage (and scandalous divorce) and narrated with acerbic wit by its anonymous third-person narrator. This edition benefits greatly from Gillian Skinner’s editorial work and it is a book that will be of great interest to researchers into the eighteenth-century novel and women’s writing of the period worldwide.

Living by the Pen traces the pattern of the development of women's fiction from 1696 to 1796 and offers an interpretation of its distinctive features. It focuses upon the writers rather than their works, and identifies professional novelists. Through examination of the extra-literary context, and particularly the publishing market, the book asks why and how women earned a living by the pen. Cheryl Turner has researched and lectured widely in the field of eighteenth-century women's writing.

The Adventures of David Simple (1744), Sarah Fielding's first and most celebrated novel, went through several editions, the second of which was heavily revised by her brother Henry. This edition includes Henry's "corrections" in an appendix. In recounting the guileless hero's search for a true friend, the novel depicts the derision with which almost everyone treats his sentimental attitudes to human nature. Acclaimed as an accurate portrait of mid-eighteenth-century London, The Adventures of David Simple sets forth some provocative feminist ideas. Also included is Fielding's much darker sequel, Volume the Last (1753).

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing1660-1789 features coverage of the lives and works of almost 500 notable writers based in the British Isles from the return of the British monarchy in 1660 until the French Revolution of 1789. Broad coverage of writers and texts presents a new picture of 18th-century British authorship Takes advantage of newly expanded eighteenth-century canon to include significantly more women writers and labouring-class writers than have traditionally been studied Draws on the latest scholarship to more accurately reflect the literary achievements of the long eighteenth century