Background
Hannah Webster Foster was born in 1759 in Salisbury, Massachusetts, and was the daughter of Grant Webster, a Boston merchant of standing. Professor John W. Webster of Harvard College was her nephew.
(The demise of a respectable but unloved fiancé introduces...)
The demise of a respectable but unloved fiancé introduces a sudden and intoxicating freedom into Eliza Wharton's life. Two new beaus vie for her attention: Reverend Boyer, a staid and proper clergyman, and Major Sanford, a dashing libertine. Reluctant to commit to either suitor, Eliza struggles with the conflicts between duty, romance, and her new-found independence. Based on the true story of Eliza Whitman, the much-talked-about focus of America's first tabloid scandal, this 1797 novel both satirizes and pays homage to its sentimental precursors. The tale unfolds from a variety of perspectives, recounted in a series of letters between the heroine and her friends and family. Eliza's situation reflects the limited options available to middle-class women of her era, and her dilemma and its resolution offer fascinating historical, literary, and cultural insights into early American society.
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( Hannah Webster Foster's two major Early American works ...)
Hannah Webster Foster's two major Early American works with a wealth of primary materials are now available in a Norton Critical Edition. Published anonymously in 1797, Hannah Webster Foster’s The Coquette grabbed American interest with its ripped-from-the-headlines story of sex and scandal. A steady best seller for decades, the seduction novel was passed down through generations; indeed, its heroine became better known than the book’s author. A year later, Foster’s lesser-known follow-up, The Boarding School, provided an equally compelling portrait of women at the turn of the nineteenth century in the same epistolary form. Both novels can now be read in conversation with each other in this new Norton Critical Edition based on the respective first edition texts; the author’s original spelling, punctuation, and usage are retained while obvious printer’s errors are corrected. The texts are joined with a detailed introduction to Foster’s legacy and Elizabeth Whitman’s life along with explanatory annotations and a note on the text. “Sources and Contexts” unearths a wealth of original material about the environment the works were produced in and the real-life people who inspired them. The three sections, “On Coquetry,” “The Life and Death of Elizabeth Whitman,” and “The Nineteenth-Century Legacy,” include new and corrected transcriptions of Whitman’s letters to Ruth and Joel Barlow, an inventory of items found at Whitman’s room at her death, popular representations of Elizabeth Whitman, and unauthorized sequels to The Coquette. Seven illustrations, including three of Eliza Wharton, are included to enrich the reading experience. “Criticism” brings together nine diverse contemporary interpretations. Contributors include Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Claire C. Pettengill, Julia A. Stern, Gillian Brown, Jeffrey H. Richards, and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, among others. Chronologies of the lives of Hannah Webster Foster and Elizabeth Whitman are included along with a Selected Bibliography.
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Hannah Webster Foster was born in 1759 in Salisbury, Massachusetts, and was the daughter of Grant Webster, a Boston merchant of standing. Professor John W. Webster of Harvard College was her nephew.
Little is known of her childhood and education.
In 1797 Hannah Foster published the book which was the sensation of the time in New England, has since been a puzzle for antiquarians and local historians, and has caused much criticism to be directed against the author’s veracity. It appeared as The Coquette; or, The History of Elisa Wharton, by a Lady of Massachusetts (1797). Purporting to be a novel founded on fact, it tells the story of the love of “Eliza Wharton, ” a young woman of good Massachusetts family, for Pierpont Edwards, and recounts the details of her elopement with him, and her death at the Bell Tavern, Danvers, Massachusetts, at the time of the birth of her child.
The possibility of a secret marriage is discussed but remains a mystery. The real “Eliza Wharton” was Elizabeth Whitman, who had died less than ten years before the publication of The Coquette. Hannah Foster’s husband was a cousin of the wife of Deacon John Whitman of Stow, who was himself a cousin of Elizabeth Whitman’s father.
Through this family connection, Plannah Foster was probably in possession of most of the facts, or rumors, current concerning the Whitman case. She has, however, been censured for serious misstatement and exaggeration. It has been said of her (Dali, post) that she had a vivid imagination and made no attempt to adhere to the facts of the story, if she ever knew them, and further (Bolton, post) that since Elizabeth Whitman’s seducer has never been identified she had no justification for representing him as Pierpont Edwards.
From a literary standpoint, The Coquette is a prototype of Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe and Susanna H. Rowson’s Charlotte Temple, a moral tale of the unhappy fate of one who strays from the path of virtue. At the time of its publication it was absent from few homes where any reading was done, and many editions have since appeared.
In 1798 Mrs. Foster published The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to her Pupils in the preface of which the author states that she has “employed a part of her leisure hours in collecting and arranging her ideas on the subject of female deportment. ” A certain Mrs. Williams, living on the banks of the Merrimac, is the fictional preceptress of a very select boarding- school admitting only seven pupils at a time.
Her didactic lectures on reading, dress, politeness, amusements, directions for the government of the temper and manners, and filial and fraternal affection, form the subject matter of the book.
After her husband’s death. Mrs. Foster resided in Montreal, Canada, the home of her two daughters, both of whom were writers of essays and magazine articles.
She died in Montreal, aged 81.
( Hannah Webster Foster's two major Early American works ...)
(The demise of a respectable but unloved fiancé introduces...)
As a girl and young woman Hannah Webster Foster had a local reputation for cleverness as well as beauty.
Hannah Webster Foster contributed to newspapers political articles which attracted the notice of Reverend John Foster, a popular clergyman of Brighton, Massachusetts. They were married in April 1785 and she was warmly welcomed into his parish, where she became a leader in social and literary activities.
She died in Montreal, at the home of her daughter Elizabeth L. (Foster) Cushing, wife of Dr. Frederick Cushing, physician at the Emigrant Hospital.