In a book review from December 1789 of the novel Heerfort and Clara, Mary Wollstonecraft dismisses the work as yet another example of the “sentimental, pumped up nonsense” that circulates in the current literary marketplace.1 The comment is not an isolated jab, but the product of considerable relevant experience. Before authoring her now-famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft wrote book reviews for Joseph Johnson’s progressive journal the Analytical Review. And, as Mitzi Myers points out, “although Wollstonecraft reviewed books about children, education, women, travel, and even boxing, fiction – sentimental fiction in particular – seems to have been her niche.”2