Jane Harvey

Jane Harvey.  Brougham Castle:  a Novel

London:  Minerva Press for A. K. Newman and Co., 1816.

Contemporary Reviews

I have been unable to find any reviews of Brougham Castle. To give a sense of how Harvey's works were reviewed in the contemporary press, here are reviews of several of her other works.

Other reviews of Harvey's works:

British Critic, 39 (Mar. 1812), 310.

ART. 20. Memoirs of an Author. By Jane Harvey, Author of Ethetia, Tynemouth Castle, Governor of Belleville, Warkfield Castle, &c. 3 vols. 12mo. 13s. 6d. Longman and Co. 1812.

What the merits of Ethelia, Tynemouth Castle, and the other works of this author recapitulated above, may be, we cannot pretend to say, but we have no scruple in avowing that we have a perused this with particular satisfaction. The title was perhaps some allurement to curiosity, and held our a certain bait for our sympathy, but we were pleased to find a tale well told, characters well drawn, particularly that of Dr. Ingleby, and incidents imagined and connected with much skill and interest. If the reader can get over the first part of the first volume, where the preservation of the heroine from the fall of a stack of chimneys, is rather stale, he will have little, or indeed no cause to regret the perusal of the whole. Lady Bradshaw reminds us of Lady Bellaston in Tom Jones, but her becoming the dupe of an artful foreigner, is hardly consistent with that acuteness, subtlety, and knowledge of the world, which are made the great features of her character. However, these are defects of no great magnitude, and the whole may be recommended as a very pleasing performance of the kind. Some elegant verses will be found
interspersed.


Critical Review, s5, v2 (July 1815), 104.

ART.18. - Auberry Stanhope, or Memoirs of an Author. By Jane Harvey, 3 vols. Pp.292, 301, 279. Newman and Co.

A severe satire upon the "midwives of the muse" - those kindhearted souls to whom each starving author must, perforce, do homage for his scanty means. Scorning fear, defying persecution, and in the very face of that legal maxim which makes truth the worst of libels, does this author, tell, "the secrets of his prison-house," and expose the intrigues of the great emporium librorum of Paternoster-Row.

With little less temerity perhaps, do we recommend this author's experience to all who unhappily labour under the cacoëthes scribendi.

Monthly Review, ns, v68 (June 1812), 217-18.

A reader feels in an awkward predicament when a hero of romance and all his party are described as being 'in convulsions of laughter,' produced by jokes which do not cause him to "shew his teeth by way of smile;" and this dilemma occurred to us rather frequently in perusing 'The Memoirs of an Author.' Some interest, however, is excited by the vicissitudes of the tale, though filial piety will not be promoted by the story of Dr. Ingleby and his children. The author constantly employs the word were instead of was, and in many passages the effect of this mistake is almost ludicrous.

Monthly Review, ns, v77 (June 1815), 212.

ART. 26. Records of a Noble Family, by Jane Harvey, Author of "Memoirs of an Author," &c. &c. 12mo. 4 Vols. I8s. Boards. Longman and Co. 1814.

On opening this novel, we are overwhelmed with excellence: not that we have ourselves the satisfaction of discovering the smallest particle of it, but in the first page we find it attributed in overweening proportions to 'the Earl of Colchester, with his angelic Countess, his lovely daughter, and her invaluable governess.' The same hyperbolical strain continues throughout the work; and Lady Matilda enjoins her lover to 'records of her soul.' Unless, however, other 'noble families' of the author's acquaintance meet with more instructive or interesting adventures than those which are here recorded, few readers will have curiosity enough to penetrate deeply into their "family secrets."

-- Prepared by Willa Bitney, University of Nebraska, April 2006.
© Willa Bitney, 2006.