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by Susanna Rowson (Author), Anne Douglas (Introduction by)
Two classics by one of early America's most successful women writers
A Penguin Classic First published in 1794, Charlotte Temple was the biggest bestseller of American literary history until Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, half a century later. The story of a young English girl who elopes to America, there only to be cruelly abandoned, Charlotte Temple was repeatedly dramatized during the nineteenth century and provided inspiration for D. W. Griffith's Way Down East. Lucy Temple, Rowson's fascinating sequel, tells the story of Charlotte's orphaned daughter. Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.Author Biography
Susanna Musgrove Haswell Rowson, destined to be one of the founding mothers of American literature, was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1762; she was taken to America in 1767 but returned to England in 1778. In 1793, with her husband, William Rowson, she moved to America for good and began a long and successful career--first in Philadelphia, then in the Boston area--as an actress, author, and feminist educator. She died in 1828. Among her most popular works were the novels Rebecca; or, The Fille de Chambre (1792), Charlotte Temple (1791 [England]; 1794 [America]), Charlotte's Daughter; or, The Three Orphans (1828), the play Slaves in Algiers (1794), and the song "America, Commerce, and Freedom."
Ann Douglas is Parr Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is the author of The Feminization of American Culture, as well as many articles and reviews on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American culture.
