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The Inconclusive Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph: Problems of Poetic Justice, Closure, and Gender

in the 1761 best-seller, Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, the “Editor’s Preface” claims that this three-volume novel will challenge “poetic justice,” the notion that dramatic works should represent the reward of the virtuous and the punishment of the wicked. Frances Sheridan’s fictitious editor (the supposed discoverer of the memoirs) contends instead that the good and evil humans experience on earth do not manifest God’s approval or disapproval because such events are always temporary and in a state susceptible to change.1 Yet just as earthly human life is always prone to later alterations, so are the conclusions of novels; in 1767, Sheridan offered two additional volumes under the title Conclusion of the Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, and her earlier ending proves to be premature. The sequel quickly became an integral part of what con stituted the work as a whole. The sequel was included in the third (1767), fourth (1772), and fifth (1796) editions of the novel published before the end of the eighteenth century.2 Despite this early