Susanna Rowson

Susanna Rowson (1762–1824) was a British-American novelist, playwright, actress and educator. Born in Portsmouth, England, she spent part of her childhood in Massachusetts, where her father was a naval officer, and returned to England after the Revolution. Her novel Charlotte Temple, published in London in 1791, became the best-selling novel in the early United States. She went back to America as an actress in 1793, wrote plays and songs, including Slaves in Algiers, and in 1797 founded a successful school for young women in Boston, writing textbooks for its pupils.