The Infidel Father, Vol. 1 of 3

The Infidel Father, Volume 1 of 3, is the opening volume of an 1802 didactic novel by Jane West (1758-1852), the English novelist, poet, and conservative essayist whose career produced more than a dozen novels, plays, and tracts in defence of established religion and traditional female roles. West wrote as a self-taught Northamptonshire farmer’s wife and was one of the leading anti-Jacobin women writers of the period, alongside Hannah More and Elizabeth Hamilton. The Infidel Father attacks the spread of French Revolutionary deism in English country society through the cautionary story of a family corrupted by an unbelieving patriarch. Volume 1 sets up the family situation and introduces the moral conflict that the later volumes resolve. The novel is a primary source for the conservative literary reaction to the French Revolution in England. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.