Smith, Charlotte (1749–1806)

English novelist and poet. Name variations: Charlotte Turner Smith. Born Charlotte Turner in London, England, on May 4, 1749; died in Tilford, near Farnham, Surrey, on October 28, 1806; eldest daughter of Nicholas Turner of Stoke House, Surrey, and Anna (Towers) Turner; sister of Catherine Ann Dorset (c. 1750–c. 1817, a noted writer of children's books); married Benjamin Smith, in 1765; children: 12, one of whom, Lionel Smith (1778–1842), rose to the rank of lieutenant-general in the army and was governor of the Windward and Leeward Islands (1833–39).

Charlotte Smith, born in 1749 in London, was three years old when her mother Anna Towers Turner died. Brought up by her aunt, Charlotte was sent to mediocre schools until she was 12. Four years later, her father Nicholas Turner arranged her marriage to Benjamin Smith, son of a merchant who was a director of the East India Company. The newlyweds lived at first with Benjamin's father, who was impressed with Charlotte's business acumen and his son's lack thereof, and wanted the young couple to remain with him. But in 1774 Charlotte and her husband moved to Hampshire. Though the marriage was unhappy, the couple would have 12 children. In 1776, Charlotte's father-in-law died, leaving his estate to his grandchildren. The will was so complicated, however, that Charlotte spent years in litigation. Six years later, the feckless Benjamin was imprisoned for debt. After sharing her husband's confinement for several months, Charlotte determined to leave the prison and make a living as a writer.

Smith's first publication was Elegiac Sonnets and other Essays (1784), dedicated to her friend, poet William Hayley, and printed at her own expense. To escape creditors, she and her family lived in a tumble-down château near Dieppe for some months, where she composed a translation of Prévost's Manon Lescaut (1785) and The Romance of Real Life (1786), borrowed from Les Causes Célébres (French criminal trials).

On her return to England, Smith and her husband agreed to an amicable separation. From then on, she devoted herself to novel writing and financially assisting her children and her husband until his death in Berwick jail in 1806. Her chief works are Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle (1788), Ethelinde (1789), Celestina (1791), Desmond (1792), The Old Manor House (1793), The Young Philosopher (1798), and Conversations introducing Poetry (1804). Charlotte Smith died at Tilford, near Farnham, Surrey, on October 28, 1806. A memoir of her by her sister Catherine Ann Dorset was included in Walter Scott's Miscellaneous Prose Works (1829).

suggested reading:

Curran, Stuart, ed. The Poems of Charlotte Smith. NY: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Hilbish, F.M.A. Charlotte Smith: Poet and Novelist, 1941.