ABSTRACT
In an autobiographical fiction published in 1714 and entitled The Adventures of Rivella the Tory propagandist, Delarivier Manley, provides her readers with a significant interchange on the subject of the propriety of women taking up the satiric pen. The fictional narrator of Rivella/Delarivier’s life, one Sir Charles Lovemore, who claims to have been a close friend of his subject throughout her career, attempts to persuade her against indulging in ‘party’ fiction, capitalizing on her fears following the experience of imprisonment and trial for the publication of an incendiary work.1 Lovemore reports that:
when I would argue with her the Folly of a Woman’s disobliging any one Party, by a Pen equally qualified to divert all, she agreed my Reflection was just, and promis’d not to repeat her Fault, provided the World wou’d have the Goodness to forget those she had already committed, and that henceforward her Business should be to write of Pleasure and Entertainment only, wherein Party should no longer mingle…. She now agrees with me, that Politicks is not the Business of a Woman, especially of one that can so well delight and entertain her Readers with more gentle pleasing Theams.2
