Charlotte Smith

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) was the author of ten novels, a play, and a host of innovative educational books for children, as well as several volumes of poetry that helped set priorities and determine the tastes of the culture of early Romanticism. Her Elegiac Sonnets sparked the sonnet revival in English Romanticism; The Emigrants initiated its passion for lengthy meditative introspection; and Beachy Head lent its poetic engagement with nature a uniquely telling immediacy. Smith was a woman, Wordsworth remarked a quarter century after her death, "to whom English verse is under greater obligations than are likely to be either acknowledged or remembered." True to his prediction, Smith's poetry has virtually dropped from sight and thus from cultural consciousness. This, the first edition of Smith's collected poems, will restore to all students of English poetry a distinctive, compelling voice. Likewise, the recovery of Smith to her rightful place among the Romantic poets must spur the reassessment of the place of women writers within that culture.

Smith is shown to be both an innovator and a significant figure in understanding Romantic conceptions of gender. As the first book devoted to a serious critical study of Smith's poetry, Charlotte Smith: Romanticism, poetry and the culture of gender will appeal to professional scholars and students alike."--Jacket.

A lively and far-ranging interest in place, space, and situation characterizes the work of Romantic-era British author Charlotte Smith (1749-1806). Featuring ten original essays, an introduction and an epilogue, this volume offers new insights into Smith’s life and work by exploring two central issues: Smith’s place as a foundational writer in her period, and her contribution to the creation of “place” as a concept of social and literary importance. The contributors analyze themes such as itineracy, the natural world, and patriotism; they also explore the position of Smith’s work and authorial identity in terms of genre, aesthetics, and market dynamics. With its innovative approach to place as a material location, symbolic principle, and literary device, this volume advances our understanding of Smith’s work. Placing Charlotte Smith reveals Smith as an author who not only energizes our interest in domestic concerns, but who also shapes a global discourse constituted by changing ideas about borders, travel, national, and international identities.

Charlotte Smith's early sonnets established the genre as a Romantic form; her novels advanced sensibility beyond its reliance on emotional facility; and her blank verse initiated one of the most familiar of Romantic verse forms. This volume draws together the best of current scholarship.

This book explores Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets and clarifies its 'place' - understood in multiple ways - in literary history. It argues that Smith's work engages more deeply with tradition than has hitherto been realised and revises our understanding not only of Smith's career but also of the sonnet in eighteenth-century England.

Reveals the extent to which Charlotte Turner Smith's work constitutes as significant an achievement as her poetry, representing the turbulent decade of the 1790s on its social and political, as well as literary, planes with an unparalleled richness of detail and an unblinkered vision.

Charlotte Turner Smith held a central position during the formative years of the British Romantic period. Smith's work includes eleven novels and two fictional adaptations from the French. This edition reveals the extent to which Smith's work in this form constitutes as significant an achievement as her poetry.

Charlotte Turner Smith held a central position during the formative years of the British Romantic period. Smith's work includes eleven novels and two fictional adaptations from the French. This edition reveals the extent to which Smith's work in this form constitutes as significant an achievement as her poetry.