Bøker av Susanna Rowson

As Americans began defining who was to be counted a citizen in their newly-established republic, Susanna Rowson's comic opera Slaves in Algiers (1794) makes an earnest case that women be accorded the rights guaranteed to men, playfully turning sexual hierarchies on their head: "Women were born for universal sway; / Men to adore, be silent, and obey." A fast-paced plot, engaging characterization, and rollicking songs ensured that Slaves in Algiers garnered success when it was first performed at the New Theater in Philadelphia. But Rowson's play also engages in perpetuating racial stereotypes: set in Algiers at a time when Barbary pirates were seizing more and more U.S. ships in the Mediterranean Sea, Slaves in Algiers is written for a largely white audience driven by outrage at the enslavement of white people in the Barbary states. The play is critical of many aspects of North African cultures, particularly the practices of piracy and enslavement, while not acknowledging the moral and ethical taint of America's own enslavement of African Americans. In recent years, critics have given increased attention to Slaves in Algiers, particularly to its interwoven feminist, nationalist, and imperialist themes, as well as to its treatment of Muslim and Jewish characters. This volume is one of a number of editions that have been drawn from the pages of the acclaimed Broadview Anthology of American Literature. The series is designed to make selections from the anthology available in a format convenient for use in a wide variety of contexts; each edition features an introduction and exaplanatory footnotes, and is designed to meet the needs of today's students.

A teenager is seduced by a charming solider who abandons her in a foreign country. Charlotte Temple, by Susanna Rowson, is a tragic story about a young girl left to fend for herself in America. The book was originally published in England in 1791 and the U.S. in 1794.

Seduced by a handsome English soldier, Charlotte abandons everything she has known to travel to America. When they get there, he loses interest in the young girl, leaving her to fend for herself in New York City. When she succumbs to illness and poverty, she leaves a young daughter behind. Lucy Temple is a novel by Susanna Rowson.

Susanna Haswell Rowson, a popular and prolific writer, actress, and educator in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, had a truly transatlantic life and career, moving twice from England to America and publishing extensively in both countries. A transatlantic sensibility informs her fictionalized "history" of America, Reuben and Rachel, which traces ten generations of an extended family, beginning with the marriage of Christopher Columbus's son to a native Peruvian princess, moving through the Tudor succession crises and the colonial settlement of New England, and ending with the title characters, who leave England for America, renounce titles of nobility, and consider their children "true-born Americans." In Rowson's representation, the American character derives from fusion and hybridity, the results of intermarriage across racial, religious and national lives.

With an Introduction by Jane SmileyFirst 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.

Like `The Coquette' this novel was immensely popular in its day and was in fact the most popular novel in America until `Uncle Tom's Cabin'.