This is an important critical look at Eliza Haywood's work. It brings together established and newer scholars. The debates are lively, and the research is thorough.

This book is so informative, and yet at the same time entertaining. I am a passionate woman, so the title caught my eye. As I read though, I discovered just what kind of woman Eliza Haywood is and how that personality shines through in her writing. Thank God someone like Kirsten T. Saxton is around to share her insightful thoughts with the world. I am anxiously awaiting the next book!

This is not the entire Female Spectator (which would be very long indeed, and much more pricey). Instead, it is an affordable, carefully chosen selection from Eliza Haywood's _Female Spectator_ (a magazine-like publication that ran for several years). The introduction is top-notch. I own this book and refer to it often. This is a great book to read a little at a time. It gives wonderful insight into issues of 18th-century life for women (marriage, manners, and morals). I highly recommend it.

I love Eliza Haywood and only wish I could get all of her novels that are out of print. Eliza's novels are absolutely wonderful. Her characters are real people with real vices and good intentions. Her plots a completely twisty and surprising. This one is not her best, but if you love the genre, you will love this book also.

If you are buying this book, more likely than not it is required reading for your women's literature class. To help guide you along (since this can be a hard read for some people)Here is a quick synopsis: * Betsy Thoughtless is coming of age. This means she is trying to be independent, but is also in the mist of the courting ritual. * She does not want to pick a suiter because she will no longer be able to play the field. * The man she should marry (Trustworthy) leaves her because he is told she has a bastard child (She really doesn't, she is just helping out another child). * She ends up marrying Mundane. He is a horrible husband. He dies (Trustworthy's wife also dies). * Betsy and Trustworthy end up getting married (as they should have). This book deals with the courtship ritual and how important it was to civilization and women at that time. Note toward the end that Besty had to marry mundane in order to grow up and be worthy of Trustworthy's had in marriage.

This book is troubling for me, but also very very compelling. Betsy Thoughtless comes from a tradition of naming characters for their personality, hence names like Sir Trusty, Sir Loveit, Mr. Goodman, Mr. Trueworth, etc. This kind of thing normally bothers me, but it really didn't this time. (As a sidenote, i think that's only a bothersome practice when used by authors that are not good at their trade, like William Hill Brown, and perfectly acceptable in the works of intelligent ones, like here or in Samuel Johnson.) What troubled me more was the repetition of character in Betsy -- it was very hard to sympathize with a woman who, though good at heart and the picture of moral perfection (as long as you keep her away from men), persisted in her thoughlessness for 500 pages and several lessons before even beginning to rethink her behavior. It might have been better if Haywood had cut out one or two of those attempts on Betsy's innocence and gone sooner for the maturation of the heroine, which is the main point of the novel.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think this is a very good book, and a necessity for students of the 18th century, or of literature at all. Looking back, how many books from the 18th and 19th centuries can you say followed a woman into a marriage? Betsy's union with Mr. Munden is depressing and enlightening. Once we see Betsy in the position of Wife, it's much easier to see why she would resist the institution with such vigor, though not why she had to play her suitors against one another. "[S]he could not quite assure herself, that a breach of [marriage] was to be justified by any provocations; nor whether the worst usage on the part of the husband could authorize resentment on that of a wife." Heavy words. And this is the kind of thinking that is rewarded at the end of the book. Women were truly their husbands' possessions, and nothing the man could do would justify even resentment from the wife. Makes a woman glad to be alive now...but anyway.

The story is entertaining and educational, and Betsy endearing, even if she is frustrating at times. I only wish now that I could find a book from this era that followed a woman into a HAPPY marriage in some detail. I wish that Betsy Thoughtless had done that, or finished up the story line of the wicked Miss Flora and Lady Mellasin. When you pursue a story for 634 pages, cheering for the happiness of the heroine, 4 pages of happiness at the end of the novel isn't quite a satisfactory payoff, although it is reassuring to have Betsy finally thoughtful, happy, and of true worth. This novel is definitely worth the effort.

This book was simply wonderful. It would appeal to anyone who enjoys the novels of Jane Austen as this book is also very clever and delightful. A rather obscure novel but definitely worth reading. A classic that I'm glad I discovered.

I purchased this book under the misapprehension that it might be similar to Jane Austen's work. Unfortunately, I was EXCESSIVELY mistaken! There was no depth of character or maturity found within this book. The sentence structure was often incomplete making it almost impossible to understand what the author was trying to express. The Characters had no soul. They were mindless caricatures fulfilling wanton lusts and desire without reason. Who but a madwoman would swoon at the sight of her intended conquest on the arm of another woman-then pull her own hair out and tear at her own face. You may enjoy such as this,but I do not! This one needs to be filed under "T" for Trashola!

Austen fans would be advised to read Haywood's History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, not Love in Excess, which is a much earlier "novel" following the fortunes of a male protagonist through a series of increasingly bizarre romantic twists and tangles. It's a fast read and quite enjoyable, but be prepared for some serious nuttiness.

If you like Jane Austen, you'll really like Love In Excess. It is both a humorous and exciting tale of loves lost, gained, regained, and unconsummated. The diversity of characters really makes this book intriguing. You never know who will do or say what , and if you think you do, you'll be wrong. What will be surprising to readers of Austen or Burney is the amount of control the female characters have over their own fate. In a Burney novel, for example, events tend to happen to the female characters rather than the character shaping the events. This isn't the case with Love In Excess. The women in this novel are very much active in their own circumstances, whether for good or ill. Love in Excess deserves your attention. In the first half of the eighteenth century the only novel to out sell it was Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, which suggests to me that scholars should give it more attention for its importance in the development of the English novel. Regardless, scholarly reader or escapist will enjoy this book.