Haywood is notable as a transgressive, outspoken writer of amatory fiction, plays, romance and novels. Paula R. Backscheider claims, "Haywood's place in literary history is equally remarkable and as neglected, misunderstood, and misrepresented as her œuvre" (p. xiii intro drama).
For a time Eliza Haywood was more frequently noted for appearing in Alexander Pope's The Dunciad rather than on her literary merits. Though Alexander Pope centred her in the heroic games of The Dunciad in Book II, she was in his view "vacuous". He does not dismiss her as a woman, but as having nothing of her own to say – for her politics and implicitly for plagiarism. Unlike other "dunces", Pope's verdict does not seem to have caused her subsequent obscurity. Rather it was as literary historians came to praise and value the masculine novel and most importantly dismiss the courtship novel and novels of eroticism that she was upstaged by more chaste or overtly philosophical works. In The Dunciad, booksellers race to reach Eliza, their reward to be all of her books and her company. In Pope's view, she is for sale, in other words, in literature and society. As with other "dunces", she was not without complicity in the attack. Haywood had begun to make it known that she was poor and in need of funds; she seemed to be writing for pay and to please an undiscerning public.
In the conclusion to Old Mortality (1816), one of Walter Scott's comic characters references Haywood's Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy (1753) as a model of pathos. Editors suggest the novel had become something of a joke in literary circles by the late 18th century.[16]
Eliza Haywood is seen as "a case study in the politics of literary history" (Backscheider, p. 100). She is also being re-evaluated by feminist scholars and rated highly. Interest has burgeoned since the 1980s. Her novels are seen as stylistically innovative. Her plays and political writing attracted most attention in her own time, and she was a full player in that difficult public sphere. Her novels, voluminous and frequent, are now seen as stylistically innovative and important transitions from the erotic seduction novels and poetry of Aphra Behn, particularly Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684), and the straightforward, plain-spoken novels of Frances Burney. In her own day, her plays and political writing attracted the most comment and attention – she was a full player in the difficult public sphere – but today her novels carry the most interest and demonstrate the most significant innovation.
