ABSTRACT
Jane West is principally known as a contributor to the ood of anti-Jacobin ction that swamped England in the 1790s. As a writer perceived to be on the wrong side of history in the liberal revolutions of the late eighteenth century, West and her work have been relegated to the status of back-bench reactionary villains. Even as scholars reconsider the political allegiances of other writers of the period whose works had been assumed conservative, opinion of West is slow to change. Claire Grogan’s assessment is typical: her introduction to Elizabeth Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers characterizes Hamilton as ideologically closer to Mary Wollstonecraft than Loyalist writers, including West, who reject reform, enshrine female inferiority, and defend the status quo.1 Twentieth-century scholars more interested in radical writers dismiss West’s novels as, to use Eleanor Ty’s words, ‘thinly disguised conduct books with obvious lessons’.2 Even David Thame, who argues that greater attention should be paid to the complexities of West’s seven novels, suggests, ‘no one can deny her anti-Jacobin credentials’.3 Despite a slight increase in critical interest in West in the last decade, the body of criticism remains small.
