The Father and Daughter: A Tale, in Prose

This is the story of Agnes Fitzhenry, whose seduction by the degenerate Clifford causes her father to sink into madness, set in the social conditions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain, this novel is both an influential narrative and a convincing social commentary. The novel is about the misled virtue and family reconciliation. The Father and Daughter was one of the most extensively read stories of the early nineteenth century, fascinating readers with its pathos and melodrama. Amelia Opie completed the novel in 1801, and it was her first novel published under her real name. The Father and Daughter proved very popular. It ran to at least nine editions during the first three decades of the nineteenth century and was also adapted into an opera and two plays. The novel's use of pathos was widely praised by contemporary reviews. According to the author, the novel is «devoid of those attempts at strong character, comic situation, bustle, and variety of incident, which constitute a Novel, and that its highest pretensions are, to be a simple, moral Tale.»