"[3] Kelly's ten novels "cater[ed] to popular taste with seemingly haunted abbeys, cross-dressing for disguise, and the fruits of unchastity."
[5] The British Critic, writing in 1798, concedes that Joscelina... is innocent and instructive, but faults it for leading the heroine "through such a variety of trials and miseries, as could hardly fall to the lot of any human creature.
"[6] In Eva, Kelly was one of several authors of the day, including Matthew Lewis, to attack celibacy, through her character Agatha, who refuses to go into a nunnery because it is cruelly oppressive to deny women "the normal blessings of home and children.
"[7] Her novel The Secret was dismissed briefly but squarely by the Monthly Review in October 1806: "Those who delight in useless mysteries and unnecessary horrors may perhaps be gratified by reading these volumes: but, in our judgment, the contemplation of such stories is attended with worse consequences than the mere waste of time.
It tends to produce a sickly and irritable state of mind, gives a temporary shock even to intellects that are sound and healthy, but enervates and permanently diseases those which are weak.