Novelist and Journalist in the New Nation
Hannah Foster (1758–1840) was an early American novelist. Her novel, The Coquette or, The History of Eliza Wharton, was published anonymously in 1797 - as written by A Lady of Massachusetts. Not only was it the first novel written by a native-born American woman, in its depiction of an intelligent and strong-willed heroine, the novel transcends many of the conventions of its time and place. It is an epistolary novel in which the plot is revealed in letters between friends and confidants.
Hannah Webster was born on September 10, 1758 in Salisbury, Massachusetts, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Her childhood and adolescence are largely undocumented. She was sent to boarding school for several years after her mother died in 1762. The literary allusions and historical facts contained in her work indicate an outstanding education.
By 1771 young Hannah was living in Boston, where she began writing political articles for local newspapers. Her publications attracted the attention of John Foster, a graduate of Dartmouth.
In 1785 Hannah Webster married Reverend John Foster, and they settled in Brighton, Massachusetts, where Foster served as a pastor at First Parish Church. Within ten years, Hannah gave birth to six children, three sons and three daughters.
About 1790 the Fosters moved to the newly constructed and much larger First Church Parsonage at 10 Academy Hill Road, where Hannah wrote two novels. Her first novel, The Coquette or, The History of Eliza Wharton, published anonymously in 1797, was loosely based on the seduction and betrayal of Elizabeth Whitman of Hartford, Connecticut, her husband's distant cousin, nearly a decade earlier.
The daughter of parents highly respected in clerical, political and social circles, Whitman was accomplished, vivacious, and widely admired. She is known to have been engaged to the Reverend Joseph Howe, and then later to the Reverend Joseph Buckminster, but she married neither. After rejecting those suitors, Whitman engaged in a clandestine affair that left her pregnant and abandoned.
Her seducer, it was generally believed, was Pierpont Edwards, son of the great evangelical minister Jonathan Edwards, the preacher who spearheaded the religious movement known as the Great Awakening. The high reputation of Pierpont's father added spice to the scandal, and exerted a powerful attraction upon the reading public. Clergy such as Jonathan Edwards taught that reading novels led to moral decline.
Scandalized, Elizabeth Whitman disappeared, but in July 1788 sought lodging at the Bell Tavern in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is said to have identified herself as "Mrs. Walker" and told the innkeepers she was waiting for her husband to join her. However, while there she gave birth to a stillborn, illegitimate child and subsequently died.
Whitman's story became public knowledge when the Salem Mercury (July 29, 1788) reported that "a female stranger" had given birth at a roadside tavern and had died. Generations of New Englanders circulated alternative accounts of Whitman's last months. Admirers regularly made pilgrimages to her gravesite during the 19th and early 20th centuries and broke off pieces of her tombstone for souvenirs.
Elizabeth Whitman's death at age 37 was highly publicized in many New England newspapers. The title page to The Coquette announces the tale as "A Novel Founded on Fact," proving that the novel was based on newspaper accounts of Whitman's death. Ministers and journalists blamed her demise on her reading of romance novels, which turned her into a coquette.
Foster's novel offers a more sympathetic portrayal of Whitman and the social conditions that led to the downfall of an otherwise well-educated woman, as well as the restrictions placed on middle-class women in early American society. The Coquette dignified Whitman's character by downplaying the sensationalism of the many newspaper accounts of her death.
The Coquette was one of the best-selling novels of its time and was said to have been, next to the Bible, the most popular reading materia