Mothers of the Novel: 100 good women writers before Jane Austen by Spender Dale

Author:Spender, Dale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BWM Books Pty Ltd
Published: 2013-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

It sounds as though thereby hangs a sorry tale. It is clear that Sarah had not led a life of happy revelry.

However, she did enjoy the only good fortune she had ever known: The Adventures of David Simple met with substantial success. There was only one cloud on the horizon: because it did so well numerous readers concluded that it was the work of Henry – of course!

Henry Fielding had been ‘out of town’ while Sarah had written her novel, although no doubt he knew that the work was in progress and almost certainly he recommended it to his publisher, Andrew Millar. But on his return, and the advent of publication, Henry decided, for many reasons, to add his name to Sarah’s work. In order of decreasing generosity the reasons were – to help with her sales, to testify that she was indeed the author, to defend himself against the charge that he had written a slanderous publication attacking the legal profession, and to add the characteristic Fielding stamp of quality to a work which bore the family name, by correcting and polishing Sarah Fielding’s style (see Malcolm Kelsall, 1969: p. x).

So in the second edition of The Adventures of David Simple (which was required but a few months after the first) the ‘Advertisement to the Reader’ was replaced with a preface by Henry Fielding. He vouched for the fact that Sarah Fielding was the author and had received but a few hints and a little advice from him. But the second edition was not quite so much Sarah’s work as the first had been and Henry graciously acknowledged his contribution:

There were some grammatical and other errors in stile in the first impression, which my absence from town prevented me from correcting, as I have endeavoured, though in great haste, in this edition …, small errors, which want of habit in writing chiefly occasioned and which no man of learning would think worth his censure in a romance; nor any gentleman in the writings of a young woman (David Simple, 1782 edn: pp. iv-vi).

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