When Adeline Mowbray appeared in early 1805, Amelia Opie was already on her way to becoming an important literary figure in early nineteenth-century London. Four years earlier she had published The Father and Daughter, a brief sentimental tale that marked her debut as a successful novelist.So when Opie brought her new manuscript to her publisher in late 1804, Longmans, Hurst, Orme and Rees settled on a print run of 1500 copies, twice their usual number for a novel, an indication of their confidence in her marketability. Adeline Mowbray received a more mixed reception than her earlier novel, for it strikes an uneasy balance between radical and conservative ideology, and contemporary reviewers hesitated over its politics and its morals. Loosely based on the relationship between Godwin and Wollstonecraft, who had been close friends of Opie in the 1790s, the novel explores both the idealism and social naiveté of modern philosophy, while simultaneously exposing the frequent hypocrisies of fashionable morality.
Editions
Adeline Mowbray; or the Mother and Daughter, A Tale, in Three Volumes. 3 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; Edinburgh: A. Constable and Col, 1805.
—–. 2nd ed., 3 vols, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme; Edinburgh: A. Constable and Co., 1805.
—–. 3rd ed., 3 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1810.
Adeline Mowbray; or the Mother and Daughter, A Tale. [1 vol.] New and Illustrated Edition, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans; London: Grove and Sons, 1844.
Reviews
The Lady’s Monthly Museum, vol. 14, May 1805, p. 343.
The Lady’s Monthly Museum, vol. 15, September 1805, p. 198-9.
The British Critic, vol. 25, 1805, pp. 625-30.
Monthly Mirror, vol. 19, 1805, p. 180.
Critical Review, series 3, vol. 4, 1805, pp. 219-21.
Annual Review, vol. 4, 1805, p. 653.
New Annual Register, vol. 26, 1805, p. 357.
Monthly Magazine, vol. 19, 1805, p. 660.
Literary Journal, vol. 5, 1805, pp. 171-5.
Monthly Review, ns vol. 51, 1806, p. 320-1.
European Magazine, vol. 47, 1805, pp. 129-30.
General Review, vol. 1, Jan. 1806, pp. 22-7.
Modern Editions
Adeline Mowbray; Or, The Mother and Daughter. Intro. Gina Luria, 3 vols., 1805. New York: Garland, 1974.
Adeline Mowbray or The Mother and Daughter. Intro. Jeanette Winterson. 1844. London: Pandora, 1986.
Adeline Mowbray. Intro. Jonathan Wordsworth. 1805. New York: Woodstock, 1995.
Adeline Mowbray. Eds. Shelley King and John B. Pierce. 1805. London: Oxford UP, 1999.
Adeline Mowbray or The Mother and Daughter. Ed. Anne McWhir. 1805. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2009.
Memoirs of Emma Courtney by Mary Hays / Adeline Mowbray; or the Mother and the Daughter by Amelia Opie. Ed. Miriam Wallace. Glen Allan, VA: College Publishing, 2004.
The Amelia Alderson Opie Archive 