Charlotte Temple is a novel by British-American author Susanna Rowson, originally published in England in 1791 under the title Charlotte, A Tale of Truth.[1] It tells the story of a schoolgirl, Charlotte Temple, who is seduced by a British officer and brought to America, where she is abandoned, pregnant, sick and in poverty. The first American edition was published in 1794 and the novel became a bestseller.[2] It has gone through over 200 American editions. Late in life, the author wrote a sequel that was published posthumously.[3]
- ^ "Charlotte: A Tale of Truth - Brief Background Notes from Lecture on Rowson". Retrieved 2006-12-07.
- ^ It has been called "the biggest bestseller in American History until Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852" (Rowson, Susanna. Charlotte Temple and Lucy Temple, Ann Douglas, ed., New York: Penguin Books, 1991, Introduction, pp. vii-viii), and the first American best-selling novel (Watts, Emily Stipes. The Poetry of American Women from 1632 to 1945. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1978: 56. ISBN 0-292-76435-9 (cloth); ISBN 0-292-76450-2 (paper)).
- ^ Henderson, Desirée (2007). "Illegitimate Children and Bastard Sequels: The Case of Susanna Rowson's Lucy Temple". Legacy. 24 (1): 1–23. doi:10.1353/leg.2007.0011. JSTOR 25679589. S2CID 161338787.