Killing Off a Pseudonym
[WEST, Jane.]
The Refusal … London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810.
Three vols, 12mo, pp. I: [4], 318; II: [iii]-viii, [1], 285, [1 (colophon)]; III: [iii]–viii, [1], 422; leaf B7 (pp. 13–14) in vol. I mistakenly bound back-to-front; wanting half-titles, else a fine copy in contemporary red half roan over drab boards; Downshire monogram gilt to spine.
First edition. Though better known for her more conservative early novels such as A Gossip’s Story (1796), a source for Jane Austen, West’s mature work is in many ways more interesting. Here she treads ground that would soon become familiar to Austen’s readers, exploring the conflicts of love and social expectation in the minor gentry.
Most strikingly, West took the opportunity to toll the knell for her old pseudonym, ‘Prudentia Homespun’, who is memorialised in a long and witty introduction by ‘Eleanor Singleton’ (pp. 1-45) which is part eulogy, part satire – ‘her behaviour did a little attract the nibbling malice of puny rivals’. Prudentia had ostensibly died of a cold after running through the snow to spread scandal – the new editor found this unfinished work among her posthumous papers.
Provenance:
From the library of Mary Hill (née Sandys, 1764–1836), Marchioness of Downshire and later Baroness Sandys. Left an early widow she built up a fine library of contemporary novels, especially by women, at her country house of Ombersley Court.
Garside 1810:87.