A Guide to the Papers of Susanna Rowson, 1770-1879 Rowson, Susanna, Papers 7379, -a, -b, -c

A Guide to the Papers of Susanna Rowson, 1770-1879

A Collection in the
Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature
Special Collections
The University of Virginia Library
Accession Number 7379, -a, -b, -c


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Processed by: Special Collections Staff

Repository
Special Collections, University of Virginia Library
Accession number
7379, -a, -b, -c
Title
Papers of Susanna Rowson 1770-1879
Physical Characteristics
This collection consists of 140 items.
Language
English

Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

See the University of Virginia Library’s use policy.

Preferred Citation

Papers of Susanna Rowson, Accession #7379, -a, -b, -c, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

7379, 7379-a, and 7379-b were deposited by Clifton Waller Barrett on December 21, 1963, and changed to gifts in 1970. 7379-c was purchased from the Seven Gables Bookshop on April 25, 1966.

Biographical/Historical Information

Susanna Rowson is known today as the author of America's first best-selling novel, Charlotte. A Tale of Truth (1791). But in addition to this remarkably popular work, Rowson published nine other novels, two volumes of verse, a lengthy critical poem, five theater pieces, six textbooks, numerous essays, and successful song lyrics. Actress, playwright, novelist, and songwriter, Rowson also founded one of New England's best-known academies for young women. Throughout her varied professional life, Rowson exhibited a Franklinian energy, succeeding in a number of pursuits commonly unavailable to genteel women. Her achievements as an early American writer and public figure belie the modern perception of her as a mere sentimentalist.

Rowson's early years exposed her firsthand to the tumult of the Revolutionary era. She was born in Portsmouth, England, to Susanna Musgrave (or Musgrove) Haswell, who died in childbirth. The motherless Susanna was taken at age five to settle in America with her father, William Haswell, who had by then remarried. Haswell, a revenue collector for the British Royal Navy, remained a Loyalist during the Revolution; his property was soon confiscated, and the impoverished family, after being interned at Hingham and later Abington, was finally deported to England in 1778. Thus by age eighteen, Susanna had experienced stormy transatlantic crossings, the sudden reversal of family fortunes, and the anguish of divided cultural allegiance--events which later figured in her novels of the trials facing young women in the world.

Back in England, Susanna soon showed her gift for attracting the notice of influential people. She became governess to the children of the Duchess of Devonshire and under her patronage published her first novel, Victoria (1786), at age twenty-four. That same year she married William Rowson, a merchant and trumpeter in the Royal Horse Guards. Following the failure of his business in 1792, the couple embarked on a stage career. Mrs. Rowson continued to write during this period, publishing her long poem, A Trip to Parnassus (1788) and five new novels in rapid succession.

In 1793, the Rowsons accepted Thomas Wignell's offer to join his New Theatre Company just opening in Philadelphia. The Continental Congress's ban against theater had been repealed in 1789, and Philadelphia--a city just recovering from a yellow-fever epidemic--greeted Wignell's company with enthusiasm. As a character actress in a troupe of well-known performers and musicians, Mrs. Rowson also completed her first play before the year was out. With music by America's leading contemporary composer, Alexander Reinagle, Rowson's Slaves in Algiers, or A Struggle for Freedom (1794) was an immediate hit. Dealing with the topical issues of Barbary piracy and white slavery, Rowson voices her devotion to American liberty and women's rights, and closes on a bold note: "Women were born for universal sway,/Men to adore, be silent, and obey."

Success came on another front that same year with the publication of her first song, "America, Commerce and Freedom." A sample verse of this popular sea song reveals Rowson at her patriotic best:

Then under full sail we laugh at the gale
And the landmen look pale; never heed 'em
But toss off the glass to a favorite lass
To America, Commerce and Freedom.

Rowson continued to write lyrics until her death; many of her love songs, ballads, patriotic songs, and dirges were scored by prominent composers of the early national period and achieved immediate popularity.

Having moved to Boston in 1796 to join the Federal Street Theatre Company, Susanna Rowson abandoned the stage a year later to become an educator. The Young Girls' Academy, which she established there and directed for the remaining twenty-five years of her life, was soon enrolling the daughters of New England's elite. The childless Rowson, who had raised her husband's younger sister, Charlotte, his illegitimate son, William, and one adopted daughter as well, poured her energy into this new educational venture. She hired a notable faculty, introduced Boston's first pianoforte, and designed a demanding curriculum for her young American pupils. Never one to let her career interfere with her literary output, Rowson also published two new novels and a series of textbooks for her students. Her work as an editor on the Boston Weekly Magazine and her later essays for the New England Galaxy increased her reputation in the Boston community all the more.

Throughout her varied career, Rowson dedicated her literary works to the young female reader. Her lifelong concern for educating young girls to become self-reliant and accomplished women informs her tales of feminine adventure and tribulation, her magazine essays, and her textbooks. Rowson saw herself as a didactic realist whose "tales of truth" were meant to educate as well as entertain her readers. Working within the conventions of the sentimental novel, Rowson's fiction proclaims her democratic and Protestant vision. Egalitarianism, familial obedience, and piety were the ideals she advocated for the growth of her beleaguered female heroines into model Republican women.

By the time Rowson published Charlotte, A Tale of Truth, better known as Charlotte Temple, in 1791 she was a practiced writer whose previous novels showed a competent handling of contemporary genres: the Richardsonian seduction narrative, the digressive sentimental sketches of Laurence Sterne, and the conventional Gothic adventure tale. Her prose, and to a lesser extent her poetry, had met with moderate success. But when Charlotte was reprinted in America three years after its publication in England, Rowson, still early in her career, made literary history. Hardly read in England, the novel went through more than two hundred editions by the mid-nineteenth century in America and spawned a "Charlotte cult." Charlotte's supposed tombstone in Trinity Churchyard, New York, became a pilgrimage site for generations of readers.

The novel has long challenged critics to explain its success. Most likely a Roman à clef about Rowson's cousin, John Montrésor, who eloped with a young woman named Charlotte Stanley, Rowson's story of the pathetic Charlotte Temple gave mythic form to the famous scandal. In Rowson's fast-moving narrative, a British soldier, off to fight in the American Revolution, persuades the fifteen-year-old Charlotte to elope with him to America. Abandoned by her lover in New York, Charlotte dies in childbirth, having gained her father's forgiveness in a tearful deathbed reunion. In true sentimental fashion Charlotte's aggrieved father refrains from killing her seducer, choosing instead to punish him with guilt: "Look on that little heap of earth, there hast thou buried the only joy of a fond father."

Although Rowson's classic seduction fable, replete with nostalgia for the Old World and indignation over lost innocence, captured the American reading public, her relationship with the critics has always been an uneasy one. As early as 1795, she came under attack by William Cobbett, a celebrated gadfly of the day. Singling out her play, Slaves in Algiers, Cobbett bitterly criticized "our American Sappho" for her feminism and her "sudden conversion to republicanism." Since then, Rowson has been generally ignored as yet another "female scribbler." Recently, however, she has benefited from current critical reappraisals of American women writers. Her versatile efforts as novelist, essayist, lyricist, and teacher are increasingly appreciated as a notable contribution to early American culture.

Scope and Content

The Papers of Susanna Rowson consist of literary manuscripts, correspondence, biographical information, miscellaneous documents, and portraits and engravings.

Literary manuscripts include a number of Susanna Rowson's poems, such as "On the Death of Miss Eliza Bradley," "Hark, Hark the Woodlands catch the strain...", and "To Make Mock Turtle." Also present is a notebook, owned by Rebecca C. Haswell, which includes numerous handwritten poems by Susanna Rowson and others.

Correspondence is comprised of both Rowson and Haswell family correspondence. Some Susanna Rowson correspondence deals with requests for teaching or writing materials. Correspondents include: R. C. Clarke, Manton Eastburn, Edward Everett, M. Haswell, Mary Haswell, Rachel Haswell, Robert Haswell, W. R. Haswell, Charles Lean, and William Rowson.

The collection also includes extensive biographical information gathered by Elias Nason for his book, A memoir of Mrs. Susanna Rowson, with elegant and illustrative extracts from her writings in prose and poetry. Also included are numerous letters, 1859-1871, from Susanna Rowson's students providing Elias Nason information for his biography.

Miscellaneous documents include legal records, printed material, and Rowson's student evaluations. Of interest is an 1807 Commission signed by Thomas Jefferson for the appointment of John Montresor Haswell into the United States Navy.

The collection includes includes prints, silhouettes, and engravings of Susanna Rowson, William Rowson, and Charlotte Temple.

Arrangement

The Papers of Susanna Rowson are arranged in five series: literary manuscripts, correspondence, biographical information, miscellaneous items, and prints.

Series I: Literary manuscripts are arranged alphabetically by title or first line. Series II: Correspondence is arranged alphabetically by correspondent. Series III: Elias Nason Biographical Materials are arranged chronologically. Series IV: Miscellaneous documents are arranged chronologically. Series V: Portraits are arranged chronologically.

Contents List

Series I: Literary Manuscripts
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Series II: Correspondence
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Series III: Elias Nason Biographical Materials
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Series IV: Miscellaneous Documents
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Series V: Portraits
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