Stedman finds the circumstances surrounding this work to be indicative of the publishing trends of the 17th-century. Novelistic works of various lengths and genres were typically published as part of wider books. Sharing room with ghost stories, fairy tales, allegories, poetry, etc. Virtually any type of work could end up published along a novel. But these novels, and novellas are rarely studied in the context which they originally appeared. And they are often overlooked altogether. What she terms "hybrid literary production" chronologically follows the lengthy, action-oriented novels of the previous era. And they both precede and differ from the new dominant literary form of the reign of Louis XIV: the short, psychologically-realistic novellas epitomized by "La Princesse de Clèves" (1678).