Novelist, religious convert, political poet, and sometime Jacobite spy, Barker wrote prolifically on a remarkable variety of subjects. 'A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies' (1723) and 'The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen' (1726) achieved immense popularity upon first appearance. Hybrid in genre, they include realistic stories, and romances interspersed with poems, hymns, odes, recipes, and religious and philosophical reflections that survey and critique the turbulent social, economic, and political scene of early eighteenth-century England.