Fortunate Foundlings

In 1744, when the novel itself was still a dangerous new form, Eliza Haywood gave readers exactly what they wanted: a heroine who refuses to be tamed. Louisa and her twin brother Horatio, abandoned as infants and raised by a wealthy bachelor, strike out on their own into a world that has no place for unaccompanied women or younger sons without fortunes. What follows is a breathless odyssey through cities, courts, battlefields, and convents across Europe. Louisa must defend her virtue and her wits in a man's world, navigating danger with plucky determination, while her brother seeks glory in the army. Haywood piles on分離 and reunions, passionate entanglements, reversals of fortune, and narrow escapes with the generous appetite of a form still discovering its own powers. The result is pure melodramatic energy: action-packed, unashamedly sentimental, and utterly compelling. For readers who wonder where the modern novel came from, this is it in its rollicking, melodramatic, utterly absorbing youth.