Charlotte Smith
born May 4, 1749, London, Eng.
died Oct. 28, 1806, Tilford, near Farnham,
Surrey
née Turner
English novelist and poet, highly praised by the
novelist Sir Walter Scott. Her poetic attitude
toward nature was reminiscent of William
Cowper’s in celebrating the “ordinary” pleasures
of the English countryside. Her radical
attitudes toward conventional morality (the
novel Desmond tells of the innocent love of a
man for a married woman) and political ideas of
class equality (inspired by the French
Revolution) gained her notoriety, but her work
belongs essentially with that of the derivative
18th-century romantic tradition of women
novelists.
Smith’s husband fled to France to escape his
creditors. She joined him there, until, thanks
largely to her, he was able to return to
England. In 1787, however, she left him and
began writing to support her 12 children.
Elegiac Sonnets and Other Essays, which she had
published in 1784, had been well received, but
because novels promised greater financial
rewards, she wrote, after some free translations
of French novels, Emmeline; or, The Orphan of
the Castle (1788) and Ethelinde; or, The Recluse
of the Lake (1789). Desmond appeared in 1792 and
was followed by her best work, The Old
Manor-House (1793). Toward the end of her life,
she turned to writing instructive books for
children, the best being Conversations
Introducing Poetry for the Use of Children
(1804).
