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Loading... Charlotte Temple and Lucy Templeby Susanna Rowson
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Ugh. This was a book I had to read in college for my history of publishing class. It a two-in-one situation that has the stories of Charlotte Temple and another one of Lucy. The time period the story is set in is not one of my favorites, and Rowson's writing is similar (in my mind) to Edith Wharton's (who I also don't enjoy much). I read through it and finished it, hence the two stars, but I was most relieved to have gotten to the end and be done with it. Short, easy to read, and amusing for its heavy-handed inclusion of advice for "innocent and naive" young women. Novels like Charlotte Temple, often termed a "seduction novel" were basically advice books with a story line, which accounts for the "preachy" narrator. I thought Charlotte and her constant "what will become of me" type comments were hysterical, even though you're suppose to seriously sympathize with her plight. P.S. Charlotte Temple was so popular in its time that the protagonist has an actual tombstone somewhere in New York City. no reviews | add a review
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Rowson's tale of a young girl who elopes to the United States only to be abandoned by her fiancé was once the bestselling novel in American literary history. This edition also includes Lucy Temple, the fascinating story of Charlotte's orphaned daughter. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.2Literature English (North America) American fiction Post-Revolutionary 1776-1830LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Sweet, innocent Charlotte Temple is led astray by a friend, seduced by a young man who takes her from her country home in England to New York City and then abandons her after she becomes pregnant. The second work concerns itself with Charlotte's daughter and her two friends; alas, the sin of the father is visited upon his children.
Miss Blakeney at one point explains that she has her clothes made by local women so that they can provide for those who need help in their families; she disapproves of doing something yourself if you can afford to pay someone else to do it. [p.220]
Lucy does good works: For "ameliorating the condition of the poor [she founds] a little seminary for the education of female children. . . . She ... placed an intelligent and deserving young woman ... to superintend the different parts of education . . . . the most useful kinds of needlework, ... the common branches of instruction in schools, and ... the principles of morality, and the plainest truths and precepts of religion; while over these, there was a sort of High School, to which a few only were promoted who gave evidence of that degree of talent and probity which would fit them for extended usefulness. ( )