Charlotte Smith

Antje Blank (University of Glasgow)

Ed. by Janet Todd, University of Cambridge
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University), Emily Rohrbach (University of Durham)

Dates

Born 4 May 1749
Died 28 Oct 1806
Activity 1784-1806

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Other

Poet

Resources

Smith's Works

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Charlotte Turner Smith (1749-1806) was one of the most popular writers of the 1780s and 1790s and an influential contributor to the Revolution controversy in Britain. At the famous political dinner held at White's Hotel, Paris in November 1792, fifty revolutionary sympathisers with Thomas Paine at their head drank toasts to her and Helen Maria Williams. Fellow liberal intellectuals Mary Hays and William Godwin were among her correspondents and friends. Smith's contribution to the development of the British novel is indisputable: her Gothic romances

Emmeline

(1788),

Ethelinde

(1789), and

Celestina

(1791) are among the first examples of a feminine genre which fused narratives of persecution with lyrical landscape description. Smith's most accomplished novel,

The Old Manor House

(1793), is a…

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2083 words

Citation: Blank, Antje. "Charlotte Smith". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4112, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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