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When the Anti-Jacobin Review described Memoirs of Modern Philosophers in 1800 as “the first novel of the day” and as proof that “all the female writers of the day are not corrupted by the voluptuous dogmas of Mary Godwin, or her more profligate imitators,” they clearly situated Elizabeth Hamilton’s work within the revolutionary debate of the 1790s. As with her successful first novel, Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, Hamilton uses fiction to enter the political fray and discuss issues such as female education, the rights of woman and new philosophy. The novel follows the plight of three heroines. The mock heroine, Bridgetina Botherim—a crude caricature of Mary Hays—participates in an English-Jacobin group, leading her to abandon her mother and home to pursue her beloved to London in hopes of emigrating to the Hottentots in Africa. The second heroine, Julia Delmont, is another member of the local group; she is seduced by a hairdresser masquerading as a New Philosopher. She is left pregnant and destitute only to discover that her actions caused her father’s untimely death. The third heroine is the virtuous Harriet, whose Christian faith enables her to resist the teachings of the New Philosophers.

The French Revolution sparked an ideological debate which also brought Britain to the brink of revolution in the 1790s. Just as radicals wrote 'Jacobin' fiction, so the fear of rebellion prompted conservatives to respond with novels of their own; indeed, these soon outnumbered the Jacobin novels. This was the first survey of the full range of conservative novels produced in Britain during the 1790s and early 1800s. M. O. Grenby examines the strategies used by conservatives in their fiction, thus shedding new light on how the anti-Jacobin campaign was understood and organised in Britain. Chapters cover the representation of revolution and rebellion, the attack on the 'new philosophy' of radicals such as Godwin and Wollstonecraft, and the way in which hierarchy is defended in these novels. Grenby's book offers an insight into the society which produced and consumed anti-Jacobin novels, and presents a case for reexamining these neglected texts.