In the mid-eighteenth century, Sarah Fielding (1710-68) was the second most popular English woman novelist, rivaled only by Eliza Haywood. The History of Ophelia, the last of her seven novels, is an often comic epistolary fiction, narrated by the heroine to an unnamed female correspondent in the form of a single protracted letter.

This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and valuable appendices that contain contemporary reviews of the novel, Richard Corbould’s illustrations to the Novelist’s Magazine edition, and excerpts from Sarah Fielding’s Remarks on Clarissa.