Mrs. De la Riviere Manley, novelist and dramatist (born 1672, died 1724), wrote “Secret Memoirs and Manners of several Persons of Quality of both Sexes from the New Atalantis” (1736); also “The Royal Mischief” (1696); “The Lover Lost” (1696); “Lucius” (1717); “Bath Intrigues;” “A Stage Coach Journey to Exeter;” “The Secret History of Queen Zarah;” “The Adventures of Rivella;” “Memoirs of Europe;” “Court Intrigues;” and other works. His “Memoirs” were published in 1717.

Personal

  I am heartily sorry for her; she has very generous principles for one of her sort, and a great deal of good sense and invention; she is about forty, very homely and very fat.

  Being advanced to the autumn of her charms, she conversed with the opposite sex, in a manner very delicate, sensible, and agreeable, and when she felt that time had left his impression upon her brow, she did not court praise and flattery. The greatest genius’s of the times conversed freely with her, and gave her daily proofs of esteem, and friendship, except Sir Richard Steele, with whom it seems she was at variance; and indeed Sir Richard sufficiently exposed himself by his manner of taking revenge; for he published to the world that it was his own fault he was not happy with Mrs. Manley, for which omission he publickly, and gravely asked her pardon. These are the most material incidents in the life of our poetess; a lady, who was born with high powers from nature, which were afterwards cultivated by enjoying the brightest conversation; the early part of her life was unfortunate, she fell a sacrifice to a seducer, who laid the foundation for those errors she afterwards committed, and of those sufferings she underwent; she had a high relish for the pleasures of life; she was extremely susceptible of the passion of love, and treated it with a peculiar vivacity.

  This demirep—to give her a name exactly as much above her deserts as it is below those of an honest woman.

  Except that he was a scoundrel, there is, I believe, little known of the individual who was the (pretended) husband of Mrs. Manley. If it had not been for his villany, Mrs. De la Rivière Manley might have borne a name among the most virtuous, as she was one of the wittiest, of women…. She never recovered the downfall which she owed to that heartless ruffian her cousin. Men were afraid of her wit, and ladies talked of, at, and against her, behind their fans, as a dreadfully intriguing hussey, who ruined the men out of revenge for the outrage by which one man had embittered her whole life. All the miseries and vices of that life (which terminated in 1734, [?] at the house of Alderman Barber, when she was about threescore and a few odd years), were owing to her wretched betrayer. She was betrayed, not seduced; and she who had qualities which, properly developed, might have rendered her name an honoured name on the roll of virtuous and accomplished women, is remembered with a sort of scorn, because our memories more easily hold on to her faults than to the wrongs by which she was led into error. I once met, in an old paper, with the name of Manley among some convicts sent to execution: I hope, with all my heart, that CL. HOPPER, in his farther inquiries, may discover that the atrocious miscreant who ruined Miss Manley, body and soul, who abandoned her to misery, drove her into vice, and made of her name a by-word of scorn, was, as he deserved to be, hanged like a dog.

New Atalantis, 1709

As long as “Atalantis” shall be read.

  The testimony of Mrs. Manley is of course wholly valueless except as an indication that scandal was current.

  Thus does the same conjectural fact, or figment, afford either a field for the cultivation of the choicest fruits, or a waste place for the reception of the vilest refuse.

  One of the worst books I know—the worst in style and worst in morals, and fully deserves the oblivion into which it has fallen. It is impossible to read it through; and that it should ever have been popular—the edition I have before me is the seventh—notwithstanding Pope’s line,

“As long as Atalantis shall be read,”

is almost incredible, and denotes a taste utterly depraved. To a certain extent, however, this may be accounted for by the fact that it is a scandalous chronicle of persons in high life under thinly disguised names, and reveals or invents their amours and intrigues.

  That “cornucopia of scandal” “The New Atalantis,” in which almost every public character of the day had his or her niche. This scurrilous book passed through a great number of editions; it amused Swift, who determined to make use of the author…. We would willingly give a page from “The New Atalantis,” but unfortunately it is precisely where Mrs. Manley is most picturesque that it is least possible to quote from her.

General

  It appears from the preface [“Lost Lover”] that it was unsuccessful—Mrs. Manley was very imprudent in allowing a play to be acted, which she says she wrote in 7 days.

  The great society novelist of an age to which she should not be too severely condemned for having held up a mirror. Of her cleverness there can be no doubt, and if she had little consideration for the good fame of others, she had at least the courage of her intentions, and held her own not only by the fear she inspired.

  While young she was basely tricked out of her character; but the prurience of her compositions must suggest to her readers that her virtue hung rather loosely about her, and would, even under favourable circumstances, have been a possession difficult to retain. She earned her living partly by a profession which the refinement of the present age forbids naming, and partly by writing romances and plays which, being among the most licentious works in the English language, had of course a considerable sale. In 1709 appeared her “Memoirs from the New Atlantis,” a long series of anecdotes, in which lawless desire is depicted with a warmth of colouring which only female genius can give, but which to a reader not utterly depraved in taste, becomes monotonous from the apparent inability of the authoress to treat of any other theme. It was principally designed as a satire upon the Whigs all round, and excited no little indignation in a number of grave statesmen, who found themselves to their astonishment figuring, under thinly-disguised names, as heroes in all sorts of amorous tales.

  The one fact that she was the first woman of her country to support herself entirely by the pen, itself establishes her right to a certain place in the long line of female writers who have since her day done so much for literature.

  Nobody can peruse the pages of Mrs. Manley herself, despite their coarseness and violence, without recognising a literary gift. She was a political caricaturist, but she had a talent for her trade.

	“She seemed to laugh and squall in rhymes,
	And all her gestures were lampoons.”

And the frailties of her life were imposed by her surroundings. It is hard that such a woman should have been forced into Lintot’s protection, and have ended an unaided struggle in want and illness.