Mrs.
Behn, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Heywood, the earliest female novelists,
produced the most inflammatory and licentious novels of their time. At
a later period, during the eighteenth century, although some female
writers exhibited a very exceptional refinement, the majority showed in
this respect no marked superiority to their masculine contemporaries.
In our own time, whoever would make a list of those novels which are
most evidently immoral in their teachings and licentious in their tone,
would be obliged to seek them almost quite as much among the works of
female writers, as among those of the rougher sex.
To write a really excellent novel, is among the most difficult of
literary feats. But to write a poor one has often been found an easy
undertaking. The apparent facility of fictitious composition has
deceived great numbers of literary aspirants, and has filled the
circulating libraries with a vast collection of thoroughly worthless
productions. This unfortunate fecundity, to which the department of
fiction is subject, began to be conspicuous at the end of the
eighteenth century,[200] and excited much opposition to novels of all
kinds. Hannah More, in her essays on female education, inveighed
against the evil in terms which are quite as applicable at the present
day.
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