Although Eliza Haywood was one of the best known and most prolific writers in her own time, there is no modern edition of her works. This edition provides representative texts from Haywood's entire career, which overlaps that of Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett. The six fictions and two plays provided here illustrate the many kinds of writing Haywood produced, the ways she treated important themes and issues, and the contributions she made to the development of the English novel.