ROWSON [Susanna] (1762-1824). Charlotte. A Tale of Truth. [Charlotte Temple.] Philadelphia: Printed by D. Humphreys, for M. Carey, 1794.

Rare: the first obtainable edition of America's first best-selling novel, Rowson's cautionary tale of the eponymous title character who "dies a martyr to the inconstancy of her lover, and treachery of his friend" (qtd. from anonymous contemporary review). This copy with early female provenance. Cathy N. Davidson notes that Charlotte "had sold nearly forty thousand copies by the first decade of the nineteenth century"; crucially, the early American sentimental novel found its audience with a hungry population newly-shaped by the Revolution and late 18th-century attention to childhood education: readers were younger than they had been (often under the age of 24 and unmarried) and increasingly literate—women especially (see Davidson, Revolution and the Word, pp. 17, 112). Charlotte was first published in London at the Minerva Press in 1791 but that edition is effectively unobtainable, with no copies recorded in RBH and WorldCat listing only one in the British Library. The present is the first American edition and on its own quite scarce, with only two copies recorded in RBH in the last fifty years. Reprints were issued with the title Charlotte Temple.

A prolific novelist and a playwright, as well author of textbooks, Rowson's body of work was likely inspired in part by her peripatetic childhood and adolescence as she accompanied her father, a naval lieutenant, to his station in Massachusetts. "Born in Portsmouth, England, she traveled back and forth between Great Britain, Nova Scotia, and Boston, where her family were interned as Loyalists during the Revolution. After a stage career in England and the colonies, which allowed her to write and produce dramas as well as act, she opened a Young Ladies Academy in Boston, one of America's first schools to offer girls some education beyond the elementary level" (Emerging Voices, pp.16-17). With BAL's state A of leaf A1, with the printed advertisement trimmed and pasted to the verso of front free endpaper so that it faces the title-page. BAL 16997; Emerging Voices 16; Evans 27649; Grolier American 23; Sabin 73604.

12mo, two volumes in one (171 x 100mm). Both title pages present and 9 pages of publisher's ads at rear of volume 2 dated 17 April 1794 (titles and first leaf of preface with repaired tear through middle of page; scattered small repairs touching text; C4 with loss of a few words; some foxing/dampstaining and scattered edge tears). Original sheep, red spine label (f.f.e. with margin extended, r.f.e. with torn corner, spine ends chipped, rubbed). Custom box. Provenance: Edith Paul Worrall, 1798-1837 (inscription to title page and notes elsewhere, "presented by Nathaniel Worrall") – Mary Worrall, 1772-1839 (ownership inscription dated 1808).