Charlotte Temple (Norton Critical Editions) - Softcover

Rowson, Susanna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393925382 ISBN 13: 9780393925388

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

The best-selling Early American novel is now available in a Norton Critical Edition.

An instant bestseller when it was published in America, 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 of 1794; the author’s original spellings have been maintained. It is accompanied by a detailed introduction, explanatory annotations, and A Note on the Text.

An unusually rich “Contexts” section is 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”―and includes works from Rowson’s time to our own. Ten illustrations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are reproduced to further enrich the reading experience.

“Criticism” collects thirteen insightful assessments of Charlotte Temple spanning four centuries and addressing its central issues. Contributors include Matthew Carey, Samuel L. Knapp, Larzer Ziff, Jane P. 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.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

With an Introduction by Jane Smiley
First published in America in 1794, Charlotte Temple took the country by storm--in fact, it was this nation's first bona fide "bestseller." Susanna Rowson's most famous work is the story of an innocent British schoolgirl who takes the advice of her depraved French teacher-- with tragic consequences. Seduced by the dashing Lieutenant Montraville, who persuades her to move to America with him, the fifteen-year-old Charlotte leaves her adoring parents and makes the treacherous sea voyage to New York. In the land of opportunity, Charlotte is callously abandoned by Montraville. Alone and pregnant with an illegitimate child, she valiantly fights to stave off poverty and ruin.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the first American edition.

About the Author:

Marion L. Rust is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of Prodigal Daughters: Susanna Rowson’s Early American Women. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the William & Mary Quarterly, Early American Literature, New England Quarterly, Journal of American History, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Feminist Interventions in Early American Studies, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Modern Philology, and Passing and the Fictions of Identity.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0393925382
• ISBN 13: 9780393925388
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 560
• Editor: Rust Marion L.