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=**About the author**= Susanna Haswell Rowson was born in Portsmouth England in 1762. Her father was part of the British Navy and her mom died while giving birth to her. She and her father then moved to Nantasket, Massachusetts until the Revolutionary War when they once again returned to England. Susanna then worked as a governess to the Duchess of Devonshire who encouraged Susanna to publish her first book in 1786. In that same year she met and married William Rowson. Even though they were middle class William was unable to provide for his family and so Susanna became the provider. Susanna made money by writing and acting. In 1793 she and her family moved back to the United States and worked in a theater in Philadelphia. In 1797 Susanna then opened a school which she ran till she retired in 1822. However what Susanna Rowson is best known for is being the author of the novel Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, better known as Charlotte Temple. Charlotte Temple was the first best-selling novel written by an American woman.

Rowson lived during a crucial period in our nation's history, as it turned from provincial colony to preindustrial nation. She herself strongly identified with the political objectives of the new republic and came to consider herself American despite her British birth, as she lived most of her life in this country. Her writings reflect an increasing concern with freedom and democratic principles, both politically and sexually. To study her song lyrics and theatrical compositions during the 1790s is to understand the popular taste of the American public who were trying to decide how to live with their newly acquired independence. []
 * Time Period of Susanna Rowson and Charlotte Temple**

=About Charlotte Temple and articles about the book=




 * Charlotte Temple**

Susanna Rowson in [|http://o-go.galegroup.com.topekalibraries.info] describes Charlotte as a weak character. She meets Montraville and is convinced to elope with him. Charlotte is very innocent and is placed in a position of disgrace by people in her society who should have protected her. Montreville states that he doesn't think of the future but of the present. This shows that he doesn't care of whom he is hurting or what the consequences of his actions may bring. The author does a good job in depicting the innocence and ignorance of a young woman in Charlotte Temple. This is a true story of her experiences as a young girl and she writes it with so much sympathy that it catches the eyes of the readers.

[|[[http://college.cengage.com/english/heath/syllabuild/iguide/rowson.html]]] Rowson wrote Charlotte Temple giving it a good structure and she presents the characters in depth hence making the readers feel they were a part of that life. She does a good job in trying to make a connection with her readers. She explains the motives of the characters in length and makes them believable which draws a lot of sympathy towards Charlotte. It is almost hard to believe just how naïve Charlotte is portrayed that she just went along with what Montraville told her to the extent that she knew it was going to bring sadness to her parents. Montraville is describe as the evil one in the story but in the end she tries to show that such things happen hence creating some sympathy towards him.

Chronologically speaking, **// Charlotte Temple  //** is generally considered to be the second American novel.1 More significantly, it was the first popular American novel. Like its contemporaries such as //The Power of Sympathy// (1789) and //The Coquette// (1797), **// Charlotte Temple  //** was written in an ornate style, was heavily didactic, claimed to be based on truth, and followed what was to become a standard seduction plot. But these characteristics do not account for the book's enormous popularity. **// Charlotte Temple  //** went through two hundred editions from 1791 to 1840, and its sales continued well into the twentieth century.2 Its popularity is explained not by its conformity to standards of the eighteenth century novel, nor by its conformity to standards of society, as one critic has argued.3 **//  Charlotte Temple  //** sold because it was brief and entertaining. Its plot line moved rapidly and in a sophisticated time sequence. Further, the book instructed its readers to follow the paths of social convention, but it also posited a humanitarian attitude towards those who veered from established ways. In effect, the book combined convention with sensible honesty, and the result was that Susanna Rowson became the first of many women novelists in this country to earn profit from fiction. Although she did not duplicate this success with her other works, her **// Charlotte Temple  //** sold more copies than any other novel in the history of American fiction to the middle of the twentieth century.4 [|H1420018068&docType=GALE&role=LitRC]
 * Charlotte Temple: America's First Best Seller**

**What's Wrong Charlotte Temple**
Charlotte Temple, the eponymous heroine of Susanna Rowson's late eighteenth-century best-selling novel, is fond of "lying softly down," and her timing is terrible. She faints into a chaise in Chichester; she crawls into the bed where her seducer, the dashing Lieutenant Montraville, already sleeps; and she takes an afternoon nap that allows his even less scrupulous "brother officer" in the British army, Belcour, to position himself beside her in time for her beloved to discover them together.1 Given Charlotte 's propensity for putting her feet up, it is no wonder that critics have taken the book bearing her name as an exemplar of the novel of seduction, a genre wherein the reader "is asked to deplore the very acts which provide his enjoyment." [|http://0-go.galegroup.com.topekalibraries.info/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=wuacc_mabee&tabID=T001&searchId=R4&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=4&contentSet=GALE|H1420076798&&docId=GALE|H1420076798&docType=GALE&role=LitRC] or What's Wrong Charlotte Temple Article

= The First American Bestsellers: Charlotte Temple and The Coquette - Video = Video: []

=Charlotte Temple-Gravestone=

Many fans of Susanna Rowson's book Charlotte Temple have been coming to this gravestone since the 1800's believing that it really is Charlotte's grave and that she was a real person. However, there is no proof that anyone is actually buried there as this NY Times article says. [|NY Times article on the gravestone]

=Time Period of Susanna Rowson and Her Tale= == In 1791, Susanna Rowson published //Charlotte: A Tale of Truth// (better remembered today by its later title, //Charlotte Temple//), the first of three of her novels that would appear over the imprint of William Lane, proprietor of the Minerva Press and its associated network of circulating libraries. Lane's empire, which might be considered an early equivalent of a combination of the modern Barnes and Noble, Blockbuster, and Netflix, was built around the publication of light-weight popular fiction, not dissimilar from today's romance novels. In this company, Rowson's works did not stand out—indeed, they were simply three of the many sentimental Minerva novels published and quickly forgotten. In late 1793, however, Rowson returned to America with her husband as part of a touring theater troupe that had been recruited by Thomas Wignell to perform at his Philadelphia "New Theatre," and her //Charlotte Temple// fared much better when it was published by Mathew Carey in that city the following spring. It went on to become a steady seller in America over the next century. A second edition by Carey also appeared in 1794, and further Carey editions in 1797, 1801, 1802, 1808, 1809, and 1812, as well as a possible "sixth edition," unlocated, sometime between 1802 and 1808. In 1801 new editions were also published in Hartford, New Haven, and Philadelphia (this last by Peter Stewart), and from that point forward, Carey was no longer the primary American publisher of //Charlotte Temple//. Our best record of the work's publication history lists 152 American printings or editions of the work before 1905, some of which were issued together with its sequel //Lucy Temple//—first published posthumously in 1828—usually with the omnibus title //Love and Romance//. In 1825 Silas Andrus of Hartford published the first edition printed from stereotype plates, which were subsequently used for many more printings, and at least fifteen sets of stereotyped plates were used over the next eighty years. These figures are almost surely an understatement of the true number, but in any case, they have been widely taken to qualify //Charlotte Temple// as an early American bestseller. [|Early American Bestseller]

=Charlotte Temple Reenactment Video=