Author: BENNETT ([Anna Maria], Mrs.):
Title: The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors. Second Edition.
Description: London, Printed at the Minerva-Press, for William Land, Leadenhall-Street. 1799, 5 volumes. 12mo, 173 x 101 mms., pp. [iv], iv, iii [iv blank], 298; [iv], iv, 312; [iv], iii [iv blank], 353 [sic, for 343, 344 blank]; [iv, ii, 297 [298 blank]; [iv, iii [iv blank], 380, including half-title in each volume, contemporary sheepskin, gilt rules across spines, red leather labels. A very good to fine set. The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors was first published in 1797 by Lane in seven volumes, with a Dublin edition in three volumes in the same year. The work was "a record length of seven volumes… a record even for its publisher, the Minerva Press, which was notorious for its three- to five-decker novels… Contemporary critics, however, well aware of the financial considerations, criticised Bennett's fiction for its length, its many digressions, and its overly intricate plot. They appreciated her, on the other hand, above all for her rich gallery of characters"(cited in Art Imitates Life: The Life & Novels of Anna Maria Bennett by Sanna Fogt), The Critical Review made the same poinr: "Whenever quantity shall become the criterion of merit, we shall perhaps be able to estimate the value of this work more agreeably to the author's wishes than at present.... There are scenes of tenderness, delineations of character, and some attempt at humour, which will not fail to please: but upon the whole the story is eked out with a strange excess of digression and with many superfluous characters." The comment on the number of volumes as being a "record length" seems to have been made by someone who had not read, or heard of, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Pamela, or Sir Charles Grandison. Raven, James, Antonia Forster, Peter Garside, Rainer Schöwerling, The English Novel, 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles (OUP 2000). 1797.26

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