Introduction
Summary
The Corinna of England, and a Heroine in the Shade was published anonymously in two volumes in 1809 by B. Crosby & Co., based in London. This was the first and only edition of the novel. The anonymous author was well known to the reading public of the time, having previously published numerous novels, amongst which the most famous were The Duke of Clarence; a Historical Novel published in four volumes as early as 1795 by the London publisher William Lane, Frederic and Caroline, or the Fitzmorris Family. A Novel, published in two volumes by B. Crosby & Co. in 1800, The Winter in Bath, published in four volumes by the same publisher of The Corinna of England in 1807, and The Woman of Colour, published in London by Parry & Co. in 1808. After 1809, another novel, The Dead Letter Office; and a Tale for the English Farmer's Fire-Side, published in two volumes in London in 1811 by Crosby, has been attributed to the same author. On the whole, the author published fourteen novels between 1795 and 1811, most of them under the pseudonym of E. M. F.
The identity of the anonymous author, however, is still being debated and has never been entirely clarified. A Feminist Companion to Literature in English (1990) identifies the author as E. M. Foster. The editors describe Foster as a prolific and conservative author, based in London, who was well known at the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. More recently, Peter Garside, James Raven, and Rainer Schöwerling have observed how the identity of the anonymous author has been variously attributed to Mrs E. G. Bayfield, J. H. James and to Mrs E. M. Foster.
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- The Corinna of England, or a Heroine in the Shade; A Modern Romanceby E M Foster, pp. vii - xviiiPublisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014