The Adventures of Rivella , and: The Adventures of Eovaai: Princess of Ijaveo , and: The Injur'd Husband and Lasselia (review)

110 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 13:1 taste again" and of "ingratitude that might impel him to hatred," Matilda is, after all, biologically and legally his daughter, and his forbidding her to come into his presence will still seem to most a riveting and horrific exercise ofpatriarchal power (P- 175). Nevertheless, McCrea's thesis about the demographic crisis serves the heuristic purpose of providing a fresh look at frequently taught novels. Impotent Fathers can be read with profit by readers who teach these novels themselves and who welcome informed, collégial debate over their own readings. Susan Staves Brandeis University Delarivier Manley. The Adventures of Rivella. Ed. Katherine Zelinsky. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1999. 178pp. $15.95; US$12.95;£8.95. ISBN 1-55111-121-7. Eliza Haywood. The Adventures of Eovaai: Princess ofljaveo. Ed. Earla Wilputte. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1999. 243pp. $15.95; US$12.95; £8.95. ISBN 1-55111-197-7. Eliza Haywood. The Injur'd Husband and Lasselia. Ed. Jerry C. Beasley. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. xiii + 162pp. ISBN 08131 -0961-2. Ten years ago, if one wanted to teach the work of early women writers, one had recourse to library reserve, microfilm, or nearly indecipherable photocopies of eighteenth-century editions. Today, thanks to the University Press of Kentucky series "Eighteenth-Century Novels by Women," the Oxford University Press series "Women Writers in English, 1350-1850," and the many recent publications in the field by Broadview Press, instructors and students have access to meticulously edited, well produced, and reasonably priced editions of several important and hitherto unavailable texts. Among recent offerings, Broadview's edition of Delarivier Manley's fictionalized autobiography, The Adventures ofRivella (1714), will be valued by scholars and students interested in examining Manley's construction of selfhood, her selfidentification as a sophisticated writer of amatory fiction, and her involvement in Tory politics. As Edmund Curii wrote in his preface to a posthumous edition of Rivella, Manley realized that, "though the world may like what I write of others , they despise whatever an author is thought to say of themselves" (appendix A, p. 1 17). Dreading "the noise" her memoir might make when it appeared, Manley distanced the work from herself doubly, perhaps triply, by offering it as the oral narration ofa rejected suitor, Sir Charles Lovemore, to the Chevalier D'Aumont. In "The Translator's Preface," Manley writes that D'Aumont, "as a proof both of the REVIEWS 111 goodness of his memory, and great attention," repeated the narrative in French to an amanuensis, who, upon the death ofthe Chevalier, retranslated the text into English and published it (p. 41). Such conscious cloaking raises many questions about authorial voice, most obviously issues of how Lovemore's passion and animosity colour his representation of Rivella, and how the passage of the "manuscript" through multiple hands and languages affect its portrayal. How we are to read Manley's self-characterization remains open to debate, for though she manipulates occurrences and dates to subtract years from her age, she does not gloss over mistakes in judgment or scandalous liaisons; what Manley chooses to veil and unveil should provide rich material for studies of autobiography. Equally useful in this edition is an emphasis on Manley as a public figure. Remembered today mainly as the author of the roman à clef, Secret Memoirs ... From the New Atalantis (1709), in her own time Manley was recognized in many capacities. Katherine Zelinsky outlines, in her introduction and through her choice of material included in appendices, Manley's literary feud with Richard Steele; her relationship with fellow Tories such as Jonathan Swift, who "turned over his editorship of the Examiner to her [Manley] from 14 June to 26 July 1711" (p. 12); and her protracted involvement in the infamous Albemarle lawsuit. In the longest extended episode of Rivella, Manley enumerates how she and her thenlover John Tilly (married man, lawyer, and warden of Fleet prison), in the hope of profit to themselves, tried to adjust matters between Ralph Montagu and John Granville, First Earl of Bath. Although she was disappointed in the remuneration she thought to obtain for her services, Manley clearly values herself upon her ability to manoeuvre in...

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