the theatrical manager Rich to rewrite a manuscript tragedy, in blank verse, entitled ‘The Fair Captive,’ by a Captain Hurst. Her version was acted without success at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre on 4 March 1721, with Quin in the chief part (Mustapha), and it was published in the same year with a dedication to Lord Gage (cf. Genest, iii. 59–60). Two years later she wrote a comedy, ‘A Wife to be Lett.’ This was acted at Drury Lane, 12 Aug. 1723, and in the absence (it was stated), through indisposition, of the actress to whom the heroine's part (Mrs. Graspall) was assigned, Mrs. Haywood herself undertook that rôle, and also spoke the epilogue (ib. iii. 113–14). The piece was published in 1724. Once again she tempted fortune with a tragedy, ‘Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lunenburgh,’ which was acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields, 4 March 1729 (ib. iii. 241–2), and published immediately afterwards, with a dedication to Frederick, prince of Wales, and a disclaimer of any intention of reflecting on current politics. Her only other association with the theatre was as collaborator with William Hatchett in the libretto of ‘Opera of Operas, or Tom Thumb the Great … set to music … by Mr. Lampe,’ an adaptation of Fielding's ‘Tragedy of Tragedies,’ which was successfully performed at the Haymarket and Drury Lane theatres in 1733 (ib. iii. 408).
Meanwhile Mrs. Haywood had become known as a voluminous writer of fiction. Her earliest novels dealt conventionally, if at times somewhat licentiously, with the trials and temptations of virtuous ladies. She wrote clearly and brightly, and her books sold rapidly. ‘Love in Excess, or the Fatal Enquiry’ reached a fifth edition in 1724. In the same year appeared ‘A Spy on the Conjurer, or a Collection of … Stories with … Letters’ relating to Duncan Campbell [q. v.], ‘revised by Mrs. Eliz. Haywood.’ This work has been wrongly claimed for Defoe. It was doubtless concocted wholly by Mrs. Haywood (cf. W. Lee, Life of Defoe, i. 327). In 1725 appeared her ‘Tea Table, or a Conversation between some polite Persons of both Sexes at a Lady's Visiting Day,’ and there, as in her novel of the ‘Injur'd Husband, or Mistaken Resentment’ (Dublin, 1724), she warned her readers in an advertisement that she had ‘no particular persons or families in view.’ But in her ‘Memoirs of a certain Island adjacent to Utopia, written by a celebrated author of that country. Now translated into English’ (London, 1725, 2 vols. 8vo), she introduced many scandalous episodes, and appended a ‘key’ in which the fictitious names in her narrative were identified with well-known living persons (through their initials). The success of ‘Utopia’ led Mrs. Haywood to produce in 1727 a similar work, ‘The Secret History of the Present Intrigues of the Court of Caramania,’ also with a ‘key.’ These two ‘most scandalous’ works excited the wrath of Pope, and some of the bitterest and coarsest lines in the ‘Dunciad’ (1728) ridicule Mrs. Haywood (bk. ii. ll. 157 sq.). In the early editions Pope represents her as one of the prizes for which Curll and Chapman, the publisher of her ‘Utopia,’ race against each other. In the final edition Osborne's name was substituted for Chapman's, but in all Mrs. Haywood is won by Curll. In a note on the passage, Pope describes her as one of those ‘shameless scribblers … who, in libellous memoirs and novels, reveal the faults or misfortunes of both sexes, to the ruin of public fame or disturbance of private happiness.’ Mrs. Haywood seems to have mildly retaliated by contributing a few pages to the ‘Female Dunciad,’ 1729 (a collection of scurrilous attacks on Pope made by Curll). Mrs. Haywood there speaks well of Curll, but despite Pope's assumption that Curll and Mrs. Haywood were closely associated in business, their only connection seems to have sprung from a desire to avenge themselves on Pope. Pope's attack was repeated by his friends. Swift wrote of her (26 Oct. 1731) to the Countess of Suffolk, who seems to have feared her pen, as a ‘stupid, infamous, scribbling woman’ (Swift, Works, ed. Scott, xvii. 430). Lord Peterborough, in a letter to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in 1735, denied that Pope referred to Lady Mary in a well-known passage in his first satire. He represented that Pope had assured him that such women as Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Haywood, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Behn were alone the objects of his satire (Pope, Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, iii. 279). Horace Walpole wrote contemptuously of her as the counterpart of Mrs. Behn on 10 June 1743 (Letters, ed. Cunningham, i. 251). Mrs. Haywood's later works of fiction were for the most part inoffensive, although she has been credited with one later effort in slanderous literature, viz. ‘The Fortunate Foundlings, being the Genuine History of Colonel M—rs and his sister Madame de P—y, the issue of the Hon. Ch—s. M—rs, son of the late Duke of R—l—d,’ 1744, 12mo (Halkett and Laing).
In an advertisement appended to vol. i. of ‘The Virtuous Villager, or Virgin's Victory, being the Memoirs of a Great Lady at the Court of France, written by herself’ (London, 1742, 2 vols. 8vo: a translation by Mrs.
