Hannah Webster Foster

#2

Hannah Webster Foster based The Coquette on the true story of Elizabeth Whitman, an unmarried woman who died in childbirth in New England. Fictionalizing Whitman's experiences in her heroine, Eliza Wharton, Foster created a compelling narrative of seduction that was hugely successful with readers. The Boarding School, a less widely known work by Foster, is an experimental text, part epistolary novel and part conduct book. Together, the novels explore the realities of women's lives in early America.The critical introduction and appendices to this edition, which explore female friendship and the education of women in the novels, frame Foster as more than a purveyor of the sentimental novel, and re-evaluate her placement in American literary history.

#3

The much-publicized death of a Connecticut poet comes to life in The Coquette. A bestseller, the story of seduction and betrayal fictionalizes the Elizabeth Whitman scandal ten years later through the catalyst of Eliza Wharton.Torn between a enchanting but artificial man and a boring minister, Eliza ends up rejected and alone when they marry other women. Still unwed she becomes pregnant and dies in childbirth. A series of letters between Eliza, her friends, and her lovers pushes the mystery of her untimely death forward. Follow the scandal that gripped the eighteenth century in a novel that raised consciousness on the marginalization of women in the era.