Chapter 2: Early American Literature: 1700-1800 - Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840)

Primary Works

The Coquette; or The History of Eliza Wharton. A Novel Founded on Fact, 1797 (hugely successful, this sentimental novel was published by "A Lady of Massachusetts;" Foster's name first appears in the 1866 reprint); The Boarding School; or, Lessons of a Preceptress to her Pupils, 1798.

Selected Bibliography

Amberg, Julie S. "Political and Sentimental Discourse in 1790s America. Judith Sargent Murray's 'The Gleaner', Hannah Webster Foster's 'The Coquette', and Susanna Haswell Rowson's 'Reuben and Rachel; or, Tales of Old Times'." DAI 57.2 (Aug 1996): DA9620862. Degree granting institution: Tulane U, 1995.

Baker, Dorothy Z. "'Detested Be the Epithet!': Definition, Maxim, and the Language of Social Dicta in Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette." Essays in Literature 23.1 (Sprg 1996): 58-68.

Bontatibus, Donna R. "The Seduction Novel of the Early Nation: A Call for Socio Political Reform." DAI 56.9 (Mar 1996): DA9601835. Degree granting institution: U of Rhode Island, 1995.

Brown, Gillian. "Consent, Coquetry, and Consequences." American Literary History 9.4 (Wint 1997): 625-52.

Cassuto, Leonard. "The Seduction of American Religious Discourse in Foster's The Coquette." Reform and Counterreform: Dialectics of the Word in Western Christianity since Luther. Ed. John C. Hawley. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994. 105-18.

Evans, Gareth. "Rakes, Coquettes and Republican Patriarchs: Class, Gender and Nation in Early American Sentimental Fiction." Canadian Review of American Studies 25.3 (1995): 41-62.

Fizer, Irene. "Signing as Republican Daughters: The Letters of Eliza Southgate and The Coquette." The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 34.3 (1993): 243-63.

Foster, Gwendolyn A. "The Dialogic Margins of Conduct Fiction: Hannah Webster Foster's The Boarding School." Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas 25 (Oct 1994): 59-72.

Hamilton, Kristie. "An Assault on the Will: Republican Virtue and the City in Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette." Early American Literature 24.2 (1989): 135-51.

Harris, Sharon M. "Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette: Critiquing Franklin's America." Redefining the Political Novel: American Women Writers, 1797-1901. Ed. Sharon M. Harris. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1995. 1-22.

Matzke, Candace K. B. "'The Woman Writes as if the Devil Was in Her': A Rhetorical Approach to Three Early American Novels." DAI 45.1 (Jul 1984): 183A-184A.

Pettengill, Claire C. "Sisterhood in a Separate Sphere: Female Friendship in Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette and The Boarding School." Early American Literature 27.3 (1992): 185-203.

Pettengill, Claire C. "Hannah Webster Foster (1758-1840)." Legacy 12.2 (1995): 133-41.

| Top | Richards, Jeffrey H. "The Politics of Seduction: Theater, Sexuality, and National Virtue in the Novels of Hannah Foster." Exceptional Spaces: Essays in Performance and History. Ed. Della Pollock. Chapel Hill, NC: U of North Carolina P, 1998. 238-57.

Schmidt, Daniel W. "Writing a Self in The Coquette, Ruth Hall, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl." Nebraska English Journal 38.1 (Fall 1992): 13-24.

Shuffelton, Frank. "Mrs. Foster's Coquette and the Decline of the Brotherly Watch.' Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 16 (1986): 211-24.

Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. "Domesticating 'Virtue': Coquettes and Revolutionaries in Young America." Literature and the Body: Essays on Populations and Persons. Ed. Elaine Scarry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988. 160.84.

Tassoni, John P. "'A Thousand Conversations': Genre Placement and Social Relations in American Sentimental Narratives." DAI 53.6 (Dec 1992): DA9229031. Degree granting institution: Indiana U, Pennsylvania

- - -. "'I Can Step Out of Myself a Little': Feminine Virtue and Female Friendship in Hannah Foster's The Coquette." Communication and Women's Friendships: Parallels and Intersections in Literature and Life. Eds. Janet D. ward and JoAnna S. Mink.Bowling Green, OH: Popular, 1993. 97-111.

Verhoeven, W. M. "'Persuasive Rhetorick': Representation and Resistance in Early American Epistolary Fiction." Making America/Making American Literature. Eds. Robert A. Lee and W. M. Verhoeven. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996.

Waldstreicher, David. "'Fallen under My Observation': Vision and Virtue in The Coquette." Early American Literature 27.3 (1992): 204-18.

Wenska, Walter P., Jr. "The Coquette and the American Dream of Freedom." Early American Literature 12 (1977-78): 243-55.

White, Devon. "Contemporary Criticism of Five Early American Sentimental Novels, 1970-1994: An Annotated Bibliography." Bulletin of Bibliography 52.4 (Dec 1995): 293-305.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 2: Early American Literature: 1700-1800 - Hannah Webster Foster." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap2/foster.html (provide page date or date of your login).