(CON) Vol I; [A]7, B-M12, N4, Contents. [A]1r Half-title, verso blank; [A]2r Title, verso blank; [A]3rv Contents; [A]4r-[A]7r Dedication, [A]7v blank; B1r-N4r Text, N4v blank.Vol II; [A]4, B-O12, P2, Contents. [A]1r Half-title, verso blank; [A]2r Title, verso blank; [A]3r-[A]4r Contents, [A]4v blank; B1r-P2v Text.Vol III; [A]4, B-M12, N4, Contents. [A]1r Half-title, verso blank; [A]2r Title, verso blank; [A]3r-[A]4r Contents, [A]4v blank; B1r-N4r Text, N4v blank.Vol IV; [A]3, B-P12, Q11, Contents. [A]1r Half-title, verso blank; [A]2r Title, verso blank; [A]3rv Contents; B1r-Q11r Text, Q11v blank.Vol V; [A]3, B-N12, O10, Contents. [A]1r Half-title, verso blank; [A]2r Title, verso blank; [A]3rv Contents; B1r-O9v Text; P10r Advertisement for two works by Bennett, O10v blank.Vol VI; [A]2, B-P12, Q2, Contents. [A]1r Half-title, verso blank; [A]2r Title, verso blank; B1r-Q2r Text, Q2v blank.Vol VII; [A]3, B-S12, T3, Contents. [A]1r Half-title, verso blank; [A]2r Title, verso blank; [A]3rv Contents; B1r-T3v Text.||(REF) Block, p. 19; Summers, A Gothic Bibliography, pp. 244-5; Blakey, p. 180; Garside, Raven, and Schˆwerling, 1797:26; Twenty-one copies in ESTC||(PHY) Accession no. 106: bound in contemporary half speckled calf, marbled boards, gilt rules and lettering, red labels. Pages 299-130, Volume V torn, with loss||(ABS) Enormous novel by perhaps the most talented of the Minerva Press novelists. Mary Russell Mitford found 'a freshness and truth [in] The Beggar Girl which I have never found in any fiction except that of Miss Austen'; while Colerirdge described is as 'the best novel since Fielding'. This was the longest novel ever published by the Minerva Press, a complex story of a changeling, the beggar girl Rosa, actually of noble parentage but exchanged in infancy with the child of her nurse. There are sufficient sub plots to fill several other novels. Rosa's guardian, an old colonel from the Indian Army, is a brilliant figure, and the mystery of her birth is finally unravelled in India. Most of the novel. however, is devoted to the realistic scenes of London middle-class life at which Mrs. Bennett excelled. here 'Smollet and Richardson are left behind; we are on the threshold of a new era, and Dickens and Thackeray are casting their shadows before.' (J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England 1700-1800 (1969), p. 173.) The Critical Review criticised the novel's length and tangential plot, but acknowledged the skill of the author: 'whenever quantity shall become the criterion of merit, we shall perhaps be able to estimate the value of this work more agreeably to the author's wishes than at present ... There are scenes of tenderness, delineations of character, and some attempts at humour, which will not fail to please ...'.(Quaritch English Books April 2010.)