Charlotte Temple Author:Susanna Rowson To one living in the newly established United States of America of the 1790s, the little volumes entitled Charlotte: A Tale of Truth, written "for the perusal of the young and thoughtless of the fair sex," must have seemed especially enticing. The heroine is a beautiful young girl, the villain, a British officer; the theme, seduction. Readers ... more »of that day, familiar with the heroines of Richardson and Goldsmith, were prepared for the tearful didacticism which lent fascination to descriptions of the sorrows and sufferings of innocence wronged. Charlotte drew tears and sighs from thousands of readers for generations and achieved such fame that it was a best-seller for over half a century, until Uncle Tom's Cabin succeeded it as a popular favorite. This edition, the first since the original to be based on the 1791 text, is made available to the modern reader that he might either shed tears over the fate of Charlotte Temple or at least give thought to the changes in taste between the days of our Revolutionary ancestors and our own time.« less