H ofland, B arbara

Abstract

Barbara Hofland (1770–1844) was one of the most prolific fiction writers of the Romantic era; she authored several books a year to a total of over 60 works. Though she published in a number of genres, she is best known as a children's writer who penned one‐volume tales characterized by their domestic realism and their promotion of social, moral, religious, and economic values. Hofland's tales are situated within a tradition of children's fiction by rationalist children's authors, like her friend Maria Edgeworth, as well as by Evangelicals such as Hannah More and Mary Sherwood. Indeed, Hofland's characters exemplify many middle‐class evangelical virtues – self‐control, moderation, and industry – and her tales likewise endorse a providential world view and the interconnection of economic and religious principles. Hofland's tales, however, are geared to older children and are not as overtly religious or didactic as those of her contemporaries. Furthermore, like another friend, Mary Mitford, Hofland wrote to support her family, so her generic choices and thematic concerns reflect her motivation to find marketable fictional forms available to female professional writers in early nineteenth‐century Britain. Though throughout her career she continued publishing in a variety of genres, in the moral, domestic tale Hofland found a form that was the most commercially successful and would not call into question her respectability or femininity. The marketability of her moral tales reflects the tastes of the Romantic‐era reading public and the role this genre plays as a bridge between didactic fiction and the later nineteenth‐century realist novel.