The editor of a great American newspaper once offered the author of
these lines a commission to explore a lost country, the seat of a
fallen and forgotten civilisation. It was not in Yucatan, or
Central Africa, or Thibet, or Kafiristan, this desolate region, once
so popular, so gaudy, so much frequented and desired. It was only
the fashionable novels of the Forties, say from 1835 to 1850, that I
was requested to examine and report upon. But I shrank from the
colossal task. I am no Mr. Stanley; and the length, the
difficulties, the arduousness of the labour appalled me. Besides, I
do not know where that land lies, the land of the old Fashionable
Novel, the Kor of which Thackeray's Lady Fanny Flummery is the
Ayesha. What were the names of the old novels, and who were the
authors, and in the circulating library of what undiscoverable
watering-place are they to be found? We have heard of Mrs. Gore, we
have heard of Tremayne, and Emilia Wyndham, and the Bachelor of the
Albany; and many of us have read Pelham, or know him out of
Carlyle's art, and those great curses which he spoke. But who was
the original, or who were the originals, that sat for the portrait
of the "Fashionable Authoress," Lady Fanny Flummery? and of what
work is Lords and Liveries a parody? The author is also credited
with Dukes and Dejeuners, Marchionesses and Milliners, etc. Could,
any candidate in a literary examination name the prototypes? "Let
mantua-makers puff her, but not men," says Thackeray, speaking of
Lady Fanny Flummery, "and the Fashionable Authoress is no more.
Blessed, blessed thought! No more fiddle-faddle novels! When will
you arrive, O happy Golden Age!"

Well, it has arrived, though we are none the happier for all that.
The Fashionable Novel has ceased to exist, and the place of the
fashionable authoress knows her no more. Thackeray plainly detested