Fabulous and scandalous, Delariver Manley—alongside Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood—was one of the most popular and recognisable among English women writers in the early eighteenth century.
She presents readers with a fictional biographer, responsible for telling us her own story, in The Adventures of Rivella (1714). She is Rivella; and readers are There For It, because they’ve already gobbled up her roman à clef (such a notorious work that it led to her arrest), published five years earlier.
But straightaway with Rivella, readers have to wonder about Sir Charles Lovemore’s placement; he admits to being her friend. Will readers get the whole story? This friendship, however—to Lovemore’s view—is an advantage.
His position affords readers access to pertinent and unique information, and readers can Trust him, because he places tremendous value on truthfulness and he’s seeking answers—honest answers—just like his readers. (It sounds like the prefatory remarks to Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko—stressing the author’s authority.)
And Lovemore is preferable to the other man readers meet at the outset, whose serial interruptions are annoying and obsessively detailed (moving through a list of body parts, for instance, which is more precise and intimate than I’d’ve expected from an 18th-century narrative).
Both the introduction and the appendices of my copy (Broadview) reveal that this set-up, a tale told to someone who seeks the truth, is partly in response to a real-life situation, in which Delarivier Manley had learned that someone else was intending to publish the story of her life (errrrr, Rivella’s life) but, when she got wind of it and contacted the publisher, the original author and the publisher agreed that Delarivier herself would write her own (errrr, Rivella’s own) life.
In real-life, Delarivier’s biography was expected to be popular, as the author of The New Atalantis, a story as bold as it was scandalous, tremendously popular and publicly impugned. (Of course, it’s difficult to judge just how scandalous it was, in an era when a woman writing anything at all for publication was scandalous, regardless of content.) So the fact that it was to be told was important alone, let alone who/how told it.
Lovemore is intended to give “testimony to the heroine’s love of truth and justice” but, just as with Behn’s Oroonoko, there is considerable debate (from both contemporaries and from modern-day critics/scholars, like Catherine Zelinsky, whom I’ve just cited and will cite below) as to what’s truthful and just, and what’s—not.
The story itself includes not only a romance, but also a judicial plotline—where the “half-truths and false pretences form a persistent narrative thread in Rivella’s factually-grounded lawsuit sequence”.
Here, Manley’s decision to have Lovemore tell the story introduces a curious layer. Had she, herself, told the story directly, when “female betrayal and rivalry” emerge in the story, we would see the impact of this on one woman alone; Lovemore, however, as a man privileged in his patriarchal position in society, views not just a situation but how an entire system would be vulnerable to women’s (mis) use of power and how their betrayals and rivalries might impact law and politics and other public spheres.
This point-of-view feels novelistic to me. Particularly when we, readers, are privy to Lovemore’s biases and resentments. (We see what he says, we see whether/how he shapes what he says, and we think about how stories are told and, when we close the volume, we remember he wasn’t actually the storyteller.)
“Valuing myself as I do upon the reputation of an impartial historian, neither blind to Rivella’s weaknesses and misfortunes, as being once her lover, not angry and severe as remembering I could never be beloved; I have joined together the just, and the tender, not expatiated with malice upon her faults, nor yet blindly overlooking them.”
Ohhhh, so they’re not “just friends”: good to know. Lovemore arranges his material to influence readers’ opinions, which whispers to readers that Manley herself has included/excluded, interrupted/backtracked, and emphasised/minimised to persuade her readers as to the veracity of charges made against her (by Lovemore, in this context, but also beyond).
“It was perfectly necessary that I should enter into this long digression, to inform you of the true state of things, before I give you knowledge of an affair, by which Rivella was presented with fresh occasion to renew the complaint she so justly had against fortune, for turning all her prospects of good into evil.”
The last page of the story clearly adopts the perspective of the storyteller, whose motives and intentions can be traced through the statements about the different ways in which a writer can shape a story.
There are so many reasons to read these early novels. I’ve been inspired most of all by Dale Spender, but more recently by books like Regan Penaluna’s How to Think Like a Woman (2022) and Rebecca Romney’s Jane Austen’s Bookshelf (2026).
As well as Bill’s Gen 0 Project and ongoing explorations of early narrative, and the fabulous Broadview Press Editions. (Their lists for Bookshelf subscriptions serve as great reading lists, by century or theme.)
Like Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Delariver Manley’s The Adventures of Rivella is short; the supplementary materials were as long as the work itself in my edition. I’m certain scholars would get far more out of it than I have, but I am enjoying this process of expanding my imagined “canon”.
As Rebecca Romney says, “The Canon is most useful when we say “yes, and”- using it as a starting point for a richer and more expansive approach to our reading.”
Yes, please. More, please.
While I don’t really have the time to delve into these early stories, I do appreciate that “There are so many reasons to read these early novels” and I like Romney’s “Yes and …”. I think these early books often tell us that more recent writers aren’t always so modern and new as we think.
For context, it’s proving to be very interesting. I’m glad that I bought a few straightaway, so that I had a vague plan as, otherwise, it’s an overwhelming idea.
Huh, I’d never heard of this early writer! Bravo to Broadview for making her work available.
Now you’ll probably notice her name around and about, at least that’s how it’s been for me.
I love how playful this sounds. I’m always so impressed by how female authors navigated all these biases and prejudices back in the day, it makes what we’re reading so much more impressive when we understand what’s happening during their lifetimes. What I wouldn’t give to have a conversation with these women!
I’m glad to hear you find them interesting! There is a real spirit and brightness to Rivella, compared to what we tend of think of when we think of “classics”-as Bill and Reese say, a more frank and sassy approach-but it doesn’t feel like a romp either. There are shenanigans, but they impact the “characters” and truly disrupt. Although many of the women of this time did write plays that were intentionally funny, so there’s that!
Oh this is so interesting! I have never heard of Delariver Manley before and you have me wondering about her “scandalous” life now! What was the response to her Rivella?
At the risk of over-simplifying, the response seemed similar to that of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko: some said it was too true, others said it wasn’t true enough, others disagreed with the appropriateness of the tale itself, but it attracted many readers. I thought I’d read somewhere–maybe it was in Romney, which you’re reading now–that she slowed the pace of her writing afterwards (which doesn’t seem to have happened after her earlier arrest and trial in 1609-1610, as there were a lot of publications to follow), but she did continue to write-including a novel in seven volumes. (Maybe a “volume” is, like, 60 pages like Rivella.) As Bill suggests, later writers were especially quick to smear her as morally decrepit (including Clara Reeve in 1785 and John Richetti in 1969z).
I love this, I had never heard of her. 18th century lit is fun but I really have to be in the mood, especially English lit – I think stuff translated from Spanish or French etc benefits from the modern wording of the translator. I often find 18c English lit very hard going. This sounds fun though!
I need a lot of hand-holding with this era; I often read through the text once rather quickly (not actually quickly, but one word after the next without pausing to think about everything I’m not getting) and then read the supplementary stuff in the Broadview Editions, and then I go back and read it again, in what feels like a normal way (only occasionally rereading certain passages) and I think, well, that wasn’t so hard, why didn’t you get that before? But… I didn’t!
Just a name to me–maybe she was in a biography of Swift, I read? But this does sound fascinating and fun.
I might agree with wadholloway up above. In some ways I think the 1800s were easier on women writers than the 1900s. Getting the education, then the 50 pounds a year and a room of one’s own was harder maybe, but if you got all that…then of itself it wasn’t as scandalous as it would become. Of course, the pamphlet wars were a dangerous business for all writers. In that Joseph Johnson biography (half a century later) there were lots of women writers, but it was Johnson himself who ended up in jail for offending the Tories.
That would fit! It might have even been one of the workds quoted about him.
Yes, that’s a good point, that despite the scandal, the penalties could be leveraged politically as it suited those in power, and many suffered those abuses.
Reese, meet Bill (wadholloway), and Bill meet Reese. You both have more patience in reading these earlier centuries than I do! 🙂
Hi Reese.
Marcie, I’ve always enjoyed the more structured and often denser language of nineteenth century writing in English. And for some reason, I also enjoy nineteenth century religion – the faithfulness of the characters to their religion and their willingness to defend it. Now that we are exploring 17th and 18th century writing I am not finding the language to be as difficult as I expected, and the stories, many of them, are positively racy.
There are some very racy bits! Shocking! /giggles And I’m looking forward to my next one (Eliza Haywood’s) because apparently people were giving it the side-eye even back then! (Apparently Miss Betsy Thoughtless was tame, in comparison to Love in Excess. You will love Les liaisons dangereuses… if you can look past there being letters.) The structure I like, the density seems to be what throws me. Maybe you had suspected it would be like Chaucer or Shakespeare? I could see that. Though your interest in the religious themes and qualities baffles me. (Hmmmm, well, there is an element of admiration for those characters’ dedication and commitment to core principles which, on its own I also find appealing (as with some of the characters in Middlemarch, for instance. So, ok, that.)
I am, as you know, not even slightly theist, but my father was a (Anglican) lay preacher so I got to observe close up the disrepancies between preaching and actions. My favourite protagonists are dissenters – Unitarians in the writing of Gaskell and Catherine Helen Spence; the Deans in Heart of Midlothian – but I also like the ‘real’ christians in Jane Austen for instance and more generally the naturalness of religious observance in 19th century life. Of course, I also enjoy anti church sentiment when it comes up – in say, Radcliffe’s The Italian, or Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh.
This is my opinion. I’m not sure what arguments I can marshall, especially at short notice, to support it.
Just as the 1950s stand between us, now and a proper understanding of the relative freedoms of the first half of the century; so the Victorian period, and particularly the male gatekeepers of that period, stand between us and a proper understanding of the often ribald literature of the period(s) before.
Further, I am not convinced that female writers were ‘scandalous’ – after all we know of several who earned a living and even supported husbands with their writing – but rather that the Victorians disregarded them and so they were faded into that obscurity from which we are now doing our little bit to recover them.
There are so many quotations (from reviews, letters, and lit crit–if one can use that term from that era) attributed to men of that time, in both Spender and Romney, that the scandal seems very real. And it seems that DM’s earnings were disrupted substantially because of the furor around her work.
But I think what you’re saying is that, in the broader context, they overcame the scandal, ultimately? After all, we ARE reaidng them now? Similar, maybe, to the way that members of the far right constantly complains of being cancelled while they are actually expressing themselves freely with their talk of cancellation? (I’m thinking of the fuss about Mr. Potato Head and the Dr. Suess books a few years ago, that kind of thing. All the publicity both Mr PH and the Dr. Suess books benefitted from along the way.) That the women were still publishing and their work devoured by many readers the entire time?
I agree–this matter of scale is hard to comprehend from where we sit. Was it just a brief stifling, or was it a true silencing for those scandalous “ladies” of the early 128thC. On the other hand, some of those 18thC fellas were obviously being nasty about the better-selling women of the day. On the still other hand, Kate O’Brien was mean to Elisabeth Taylor too, and women writers can attack and dismiss effectively as well. On the other other other hand, I’m not sure we’ll ever see DM and AB added to the curriculum as often as we see Defoe and Fielding.
It seems to me attributing scandal on the part of 19th century writers to those of the 18th century applies to both male and female writers–of course, women with less political power suffered more, but Dickens who loved Smollett and Fielding doesn’t ever feel he can–may not even want to–write with their frankness. Sex happens in Tom Jones in a way it doesn’t in Dickens. Amelia of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair is named for Fielding’s Amelia, but everything is much franker in the 18th century novels. We assume Becky Sharp is using her sex appeal to get her way to the top, but we don’t *know*.
Canon changes of course, as it should, and Aphra Behn is more canonical than she used to be–I feel like I could have read her along the way as a student, though I didn’t. Not when I was an undergraduate, because that was so very long ago…but later. I feel like friends who are professors could assign Behn. Manley, I’m less sure about.
I’m currently in the middle of New Grub Street (1891), and the cynical but practical Jasper Milvain advises his sisters to take up writing, though he suggests religious books for children as their specialization. There’s no scandal involved; in fact he thinks it mildly less declassé than governessing, the alternative for impoverished gentlewomen. But they hadn’t really thought of it themselves.
Hi Bill!
Maybe “only” a matter of degrees between how the prejudice/persecution was applied and experienced, reflecting the broader balance of power in society beyond literature.
I was surprised to learn that the town library I often visited when I was young (where some family lived) disallowed novels until the 1830s when Scott’s were allowed. The presumed immorality of it all! Becky Sharp would have arrived, in time (1847-48) but I’m guessing Valmont and the Marquise in Les liaisons dangereuses (1781; English transation 1812) never would have.
Bill has read Tom Jones, but I haven’t. The Wikipedia page on Smollett has some great quotes (From both Middlemarch and Vanity Fair) that reveal the side-eye cast towards his novels. Dang, this project is adding to my TBR on every front! heheh
I was so lucky to have one prof who assigned these women, but her views were clearly the minority (as per Ian Watt, etc.), and it still smacked of being a “curiosity” rather than a “serious” study. Even then, however, one could opt for independent research topics in those veins (e.g. in a history class, I requested to work on Mary Wollstonecraft when we were assigned John Stuart Mill); I was routinely warned, that I’d have difficulty finding supporting material for my weird proposals, but wasn’t forbidden. I could see the “Behns” being standard nowadays and the “Manleys” an opt-in: I suppose that is the rate of change we can expect? Is it cynical to anticipate a boomerang?
It was the publishing angle that originally landed NGS on my TBR: I’m really looking forward to it (but have only read a single chapter).
Oh, you should read Tom Jones! He’s a man of his times to be sure, but his female characters have agency, and aren’t meant to be protected dolls, like those of so many male writers of Victorian fiction. Sometimes people are driven batty by the essays that start each chapter, but I like them. And it’s funny!
My overriding impression of both Tom Jones and Moll Flanders was just how ‘feminist’ both books were. (I’m an old white guy and NOT a feminist, but my masters thesis – and lots of my subsequent blogging – was on independent women in early Australian lit. With ‘independent’ meaning preferring to have jobs rather than marry.)
You had already changed my mind on Tom Jones, which is how I know there are three copies second-hand downtown at my usual haunt, it was only its length that left me hesitating. I’ve also given up my stubborn refusal and longtime determination to bypass Ulysses (and content myself with having read his shorter stuff) so… before the two of you unite on that score… I give! heh
As for Moll, I just want to read a few other authors before returning to Defoe (some of the ones Dionne Brand rec’s in Salvage that I’ve not gotten to yet, you know the ones).
Well, I can’t resist both of you, can I? LOL And I do need to have an element of amusement in my stacks-sometimes it gets pretty grim in there. (Mafalda has been fab, but I’ve just finished her first volume in English.)
Resistance is futile!
I do think Moll Flanders is even more feminist than Tom Jones, at least inasmuch as being feminist means recognizing women as real characters. There’s more to Moll than there is to Lady Bellaston, or Jenny Jones, or even Sophia Western in Tom Jones.
I wasn’t sure I’d make it through Walter Scott, but I did, so I guess anything is possible now!
The indents on my phone are down to 2 or 3 letters wide, so I’m restarting here. Are you going to write up Heart of Midlothian? I think Jeannie is truly heroic, but it’s her sister who flaunts convention (and the law) and refuses to back down.
I find it interesting that by the early 1800s writers tended to be moralistic about the fate of defiant women (Lydia Bennet is another) whereas a century earlier they were celebrated.
Fielding is *way* easier than Scott, I think.
I’d also be curious what you thought of Heart of Midlothian.
Reese, I read HoM along with Marcie and we exchanged comments from time to time, often at cross purposes due to our chapters being numbered differently.
Like you, I find I prefer the 1700s to the 1800s. The writing is clear and the characters are lots of fun. Scott’s prose by comparison is very formal. Still I liked his Dean sisters. Both had plenty of courage – one to stick to her guns, and her religion; and the other to not deny her man.
I was interested in his discussion of Presbyterianism. I’d thought he must be of the C of Scotland, but a note at the end send he was a Quaker. I find dissenters, like E Gaskell for instance, write the best novels around religion.
My copy of HofM was a Holt Reinhart student edition, oversized with nice type, with a “helpful” spoiler-filled introduction and a glossary of Scottish terms (actually helpful) and I appreciated the note that Scott is known as a historical novelist but should be known as an observer of daily life in Scotland and that was evident in Heart. I could see what Bill was enjoying about the observations on religion, but I was mroe interested, say, in the way that members of different generations viewed certain events/patterns differently. Given how many other Scotts you’ve read, I’m sure you’d enjoy this one.
Maybe I will plan to do a check-in mid-year for the various reading goals I’d set myself in January (Scott was one of the canonical gaps I’d noted, largely thanks to Bill’s interest) and write about it. It was convenient to be able to copy-and-paste the passages I’d flagged while reading my print copy from the PG epub (rather than type them out) so my notes are substantial. I’ll be back to the second-hand shop at the end of May, and will aim to buy the copy of TJ that I saw previously.
I’m OK with 1800s as a general rule, but I do find Fielding livelier than Scott. I’ve never read a Scott novel more than once, but I’ve read Tom Jones four times–and am about due for another reread.
I would agree: Scott’s prose is more formal, less adventurous than Fielding. I’d also say his plots are more static, though in contrast you could say his descriptive passages are better done. I love the pastiche in Scott–the Jedediash Cleishbotham stuff–but Fielding is more than capable of that, too: the mock Iliad early in Tom Jones I find hilarious, though in my defense I was a classics major…
I’ve never read Heart of Midlothian–it’s one of Scott’s biggies I’ve never read. You should write about it, too! Most of Scott I read pre-blogging, only Count Robert of Paris made it to the blog. My maternal grandfather was Rob Roy Duff–somebody still cared about their Scottish ancestry in that generation–and of course I had to read that one. Ivanhoe, Waverly, three or four others.
FOUR times?! But I know you’re more into classics than I am: if I were to list classics I’ve reread, it would be a short list. (I just reread Huck Finn last year in order to read James, as you know, but that was an exception. Possibly THE exception, I’ll have a think.)
I have Ivanhoe on my stack for later this year, along with a few more skinny Broadview Press novels from the 18thC, so that might be “it” for me and classics this year, but I will find a copy of Tom Jones and put it down for next winter, before I get a chance to think of another chunky volume like it.
A lovely old copy of Waverly was one of the first books I bought for myself second-hand simply because it was beautiful, but I found it impenetrable at the time (and I was reading Lawrence and Woolf, and in quite a different reading mood overall, so I can see why it never took). Having a grandfather named Rob Roy would’ve made me curious too, though!
Four times is a little unusual even in my reading–but it’s a sign of how great it is! Among classic classics, only Edwin Drood and Blithedale Romance pass that–and I’m a bit weirdly obsessed with both of them.
I have read Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit an uncountable number of times, but that’s because I was one of *those* teenagers.
Hah, I have read the Tolkiens multiple times (more The Hobbit and some shorter works than LotR, just three times I think) but the other two I’ve not read at all (and wouldn’t have given them a thought, except now you’ve made me curious)!
Oh my goodness, I thought I was pretty well-read on this period but this author has completely passed me by! I’m going to search out a copy immediately – thanks Marcie!
Another reason I think she’s less talked about is the number of variations on her name; this was true, too, with Aphra Behn to some extent, but it seems DM’s has been spelled in so many different ways that I’m sure when I read about her previously I thought she wrote and published in French.
Fascinating! Not a writer I’ve come across before, certainly not in my old bookselling days. Thanks for the introduction, Marcie.
I think it would be fun to read some of these and match them up with contemporary authors. I feel like one could have fun with DM and Patricia Lockwood for instance, not that I’ve actually read enough of either woman’s work to say that confidently!