Clara Reeve

Reeve was born in Ipswich, one of the eight children of Reverend William Reeve, M. A., Rector of Freston and of Kirton, Suffolk, and perpetual curate of St Nicholas, Ipswich.[2] Her mother was the daughter of William Smithies, a goldsmith and jeweller to King George I. Vice-Admiral Samuel Reeve (c. 1733–1803) was her brother.

In a letter to a friend, Reeve said of her father and her early life:

My father was an old Whig; from him I have learned all that I know; he was my oracle; he used to make me read the Parliamentary debates, while he smoked his pipe after supper. I gaped and yawned over them at the time, but, unawares to myself, they fixed my principles once and for all. He made me read Rapin's History of England; the information it gave made amends for its dryness. I read Cato's Letters by Trenchard and Gordon; I read the Greek and Roman histories, and Plutarch's Lives: all these at an age when few people of either sex can read their names.[3]

After the death of her father in 1755, Reeve lived for a time with her mother and sisters in Colchester, then moved into her own house in Ipswich.[4] There her first authorship was a translation from Latin of the historical allegory Argenis by John Barclay, entitled The Phoenix (1772).[3] She was saddened by its reception, later writing, "It was the best book I ever gave to the public, and the worst received."[5]

Reeve published at least 24 volumes over 33 years.[4] They included five novels, of which only The Champion of Virtue or The Old English Baron (1777) is well known. This was written in imitation or as a rival of The Castle of Otranto. The two have often been printed together. The first edition, entitled The Old English Baron, was dedicated to the daughter of Samuel Richardson, who is said to have helped Reeve to revise and correct it.[6] It became a noticeable influence on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Reeve also wrote an epistolary novel, The School for Widows (1791). followed by Plans of Education (1792), which focuses on issues of female education.[7]

Her innovative history of prose fiction, The Progress of Romance (1785), can be seen as a precursor to modern histories of the novel. It specifically upholds the tradition of female literary history heralded by Elizabeth Rowe (1674–1737) and Susannah Dobson (died 1795). One story in the work, "The History of Charoba, Queen of Egypt", inspired Walter Savage Landor's first major piece, Gebir.

Reeve seems to have managed her publishing career personally, rather than relying on male relations to deal with publishers on her behalf.[4]

Reeve led a retiring life, leaving little biographical material. She died in Ipswich and was buried, as she wished, in the churchyard of St Stephen's, next to her friend the Reverend Derby.[6]

Written in response to Walpole's Castle of Otranto, The Old English Baron was a major influence on the development of Gothic fiction, gaining popularity for the genre in universities and among general readers. A contextual introduction that looks at Reeve in the context of late 18th-century women's writing and the history of the Gothic can be found in this book.[8]

Although Reeve's The Progress of Romance, was long overlooked by scholars, Garry Kelly has called it "not only a pioneering history and defense of "romance" from antiquity to the mid-eighteenth century but also a ground- breaking work of literary scholarship by a woman".[4]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.
• Scott, Walter (1870). Clara Reeve from Lives of the Eminent Novelists and Dramatists. London: Frederick Warne. pp. 545–550.