Mary Davys’s Rambling Travels and Disorderly Wit in The Merry Wanderer

Abstract

While Mary Davys is considered to have played a significant role in the development of the English novel, she has received little literary attention, most of which is focused on her last three novels. This article seeks to redress such a critical imbalance by examining one of her earlier works, The Merry Wanderer (1725), a partly autobiographical text in which Davys relates her travels through rural England after the death of her husband. First published as The Fugitive in 1705, it was revised and reissued under its altered title in her collected works, in which she carefully constructs her identity as a professional woman writer, a task that involved strategic maneuvering since she published during a period when female authors faced the danger of social disgrace for participating in a literary market that was still mostly dominated by men. In examining the ways in which Davys employs her rambling movements not only to establish her authority as a respectable female traveler and writer, but also to tacitly challenge the established social order in The Merry Wanderer, this article sheds light on the covert means Davys employs to interrogate contemporary ideals of femininity while seemingly reflecting the demands of the literary market. In so doing, it considers The Merry Wanderer’s connections to her better-known novels, particularly The Reform’d Coquet (1724), thereby illustrating the former’s valuable contribution to Davys’s literary oeuvre.