Jane West

Jane West was an English novelist, poet, dramatist, and writer of conduct literature who published during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Born Jane Iliffe in 1758, West published as Prudentia Homespun and addressed political, religious, and domestic questions from a conservative perspective. The Infidel Father, Vol. 1 of 3 begins her three-volume 1802 novel about belief, family authority, and the social consequences of fashionable skepticism. This opening volume sits within a career that also included A Gossip's Story, A Tale of the Times, Letters to a Young Lady, poetry, and plays. Modern scholarship often places West beside other women novelists of the period and examines her relationship to debates surrounding revolution, education, and female authorship. A Gossip's Story has also drawn attention for parallels with Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. The Infidel Father, Vol. 1 of 3 introduces a substantial moral and domestic narrative through which West tested public arguments inside family life.