The Books Mentioned in Act 1, Scene 2 of The Rivals.
The Reward of Constancy
The Fatal Connexion
- A contemporary review opens with the sentence: "Surely Mrs. Fogerty [the author] was begotten, born, nursed, and educated in a circulating library, and sucked in the spirit of romance with her mother's milk!"
The Innocent Adultery
The Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, written by herself
- There's a Memoirs of a Lady of Quality included in Smollet's The Adventures of Perigrine Pickle.
The second sentence reads: "You will be enabled, I hope, to perceive, that, howsoever my head may have erred, my heart hath always been uncorrupted, and that I have been unhappy, because I loved, and was a woman."