| Summary: | In Dalinda (1749), Eliza Haywood pursues her interest in acquiring empirical knowledge by exploring not just how print has the power to lead readers astray, but how the public mistakenly regards print and the paper artifact as tangible evidence of a person's real character. Curiosity, and the printed word as the antidote to it, are each investigated under the auspices of the Cresswell bigamy case to demonstrate their inherent dangers even while they attempt to deliver truth and justice. Haywood reworks material from the pamphlet war between Thomas Cresswell and Elizabeth Scrope not only to comment on the debates leading up to the Hardwicke Marriage Act, but to investigate how Truth can be turned into Fiction, and vice versa, and how all literary material must be read critically.
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