Charlotte Temple

An instant best-seller when it was published in America 1794, the sentimental novel Charlotte Temple speaks to the popularity of the genre--and the public thirst for fiction--from the early national period and beyond. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the first American edition; the author's original spellings have been maintained. The novel is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction, detailed explanatory annotations, and a note on the text. The unusually rich "Contexts" section seeks to provide readers with an overview of Charlotte Temple's overlapping British and American backgrounds. Materials are thematically organized into four parts--"Women in Early America: Intellect, Education, Sexuality," "Reading in Early America," "The American Sentimental," and "Selections from Rowson's Writings"--Which include works from Rowson's time to our own. Fourteen illustrations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are reproduced to further enrich the reading experience, among them portraits of Susanna Haswell and William Rowson as youths, a London advertisement for the novel, and covers from the 1845 and 1867 editions. "Criticism" collects thirteen insightful assessments of Charlotte Temple spanning four centuries and addressing its central issues. Contributors include Mathew Carey, Samuel L. Knapp, Larzer Ziff, Jane Tompkins, Gareth Evans, Julia A. Stern, and Marion Rust, among others. A Chronology of Susanna Rowson's life and works and a Selected Bibliography are also included. --Book Jacket.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.