The New International Encyclopædia/Rowson, Susanna (Haswell)

ROWSON, rou'sŭn, Susanna (Haswell) (1762-1824). An Anglo-American dramatist, novelist, and actress. Her novel Victoria (1786) brought her father a pension. Her husband became bankrupt, and in 1792 she sought support from the stage, coming in the next year to America, where she acted at Annapolis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston, until 1795, appearing mainly in her own plays. The Volunteers, a farce (1793), Americans in England (1797), and others. Leaving the stage, she opened in Boston a school for girls which she conducted with honorable success until 1822. She also edited The Boston Weekly Magazine. Of her novels the most popular was Charlotte Temple, a Tale of Truth (1790) founded on an adventure of a kinsman with a girl whose grave may still be seen in Trinity Churchyard, New York, with Temple substituted for the true name, Stanley. In three years twenty thousand copies of this book were sold. A sequel to this story, Lucy Temple, appeared posthumously (1828), and she was author of several other novels. Consult her Life by Elias Nason (Albany, 1870).