Susanna rowson biography

American novelist

Susanna Rowson, née Haswell (1762 – 2 March 1824), was an American novelist, poet, playwright, religious writer, stage actress, and educator.

She was the first woman geographer and an early supporter of female education. She also wrote against slavery. Rowson was the author of the 1791 novel Charlotte Temple, the most popular best-seller in American literature until Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was published serially in 1851–1852, and authored the first human geography textbook Rowson's Abridgement of Universal Geography in 1805.

Biography

Childhood

Susanna Haswell was born in 1762 in Portsmouth, England to Royal NavyLieutenant William Haswell and his first wife, Susanna Musgrave,^[1] who died within days of Susanna's birth.

While stationed in Boston her father remarried to Rachel Woodward and started a second family, and after his ship returned to Portsmouth and was decommissioned, he obtained an appoint