Although Henry Fielding may not always have been fully aware of his participation in it, he and the colorful Mrs. Eliza Haywood conducted a feud which began in 1730 and did not end until 1752. There was a time of apparent peace between them when Mrs. Haywood worked for Fielding at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket in 1736 and 1737, a fact which may account for Fielding scholars being aware only of the final engagements in 1751 and 1752 when Mrs. Haywood launched an attack upon Fielding in the course of her heroine's adventures in The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, and Fielding apparently retaliated by bringing a B— T— to trial in his Covent Garden Journal, charging her with dullness. There had, however, been earlier action which makes clear that Mrs. Haywood felt herself to be a woman scorned; and, that although she had been attacked in print by other writers of her day, it was the scorn of Fielding she could least bear.

Up to now it has been Mrs. Haywood's attack upon Fielding in Betsy Thoughtless that has been the puzzler. G.F. Whicher, her biographer, could give no satisfactory explanation, calling it “An outburst of unexplained virulence.” Fielding scholars add little more. They do not, indeed, go much beyond Austin Dobson's: