Edited by Paula R. Backsheider and Hope D. Cotton. Frances Brooke [1724-1789] was a highly successful writer, working in various formats and advancing the novel as a respected form. This novel, Brooke's third, was originally published in 1777 when women authors abounded. She based this plot on courtship novels like those by Frances Burney and Eliza Haywood, but differed in that the heroine of this story, Maria Villiers, is one of the first female characters in British literature to have literary aspirations. University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Hb, Dj. NEW. $55.00