Scholarship
The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith
One of the most popular poets of her time, Charlotte Smith revived the sonnet form in England and influenced Wordsworth and Keats. Equally popular as a novelist, she influenced Austen and Scott. Her 500 letters, edited by Judith Phillips Stanton, enlarge our understanding of her literary achievement while also showing her spirit, determination, anger and sorrow.
More about Judith’s edition of “The Collected Letters”
The success of Judith Phillips Stanton’s twenty-five-year intercontinental quest for Charlotte Smith’s letters is matched by her erudite notes and engaging biographical commentary. Smith’s riveting correspondence covers every aspect of her life: her disastrous marriage, contracted at 15; her anxieties about her many children; her 7-day writing week; her physical and mental health; her battles with publishers and lawyers; her estimates of her own and her contemporaries’ poems and novels. At times she seems to break through the page and appear before us.
She has found an ideal editor in Judith Stanton, who was never discouraged by the (sometimes literal) blind alleys and high walls. There were great rewards: Judith’s pleasure in getting to the Lake District the day before she was due to fly home, to see Romney’s beautiful pastel portrait, just returned to Kendal Museum after its long absence in the U.S. It glowed, she said. It put an unforgettable face on a writer who shaped Romanticism and the future development of the novel. Judith has done more than anyone to establish that definition.
Charlotte Smith (1749-1806) is considered by many to be the first Romantic poet. Equally popular as a novelist, she experimented with a variety of characters, plots and settings, and influenced Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott, and many others. Even her children’s books were highly regarded by her contemporaries.
Smith conducted her public life in the face of profound personal troubles. With little support beyond her wits and unwavering will, she almost singlehandedly provided for her family. The letters yield a wealth of hitherto unknown facts about her miserable failed marriage, her poor health, her poverty, and her twelve children’s lives, marriages, and deaths.
These almost 500 letters, edited by Judith Phillips Stanton, enlarge our understanding of Smith’s literary achievement, for they show the private world of spirit, determination, anger and sorrow in which she wrote.
Covering Smith’s entire career from 1785 to 1806, the letters also provide new details on the publication of all but two of her twenty-two titles. Smith reveals her customary approaches to composing, dealing with publishers, and exploring new ideas for marketable books.
Through correspondence with supporters such as William Hayley and aristocratic patrons such as the duchess of Devonshire and the earl of Egremont, Smith’s letters also shed light on women and patronage in the late eighteenth century.
As Judith neared the end of preparing the letters for press, The Petworth House Archives turned up fifty-six additional lost letters in an old tin muniment chest. They had not been seen in at least 100 years. Most were from Smith’s early career (years otherwise thinly represented), along with two letters she wrote to her troublesome, reviled husband Benjamin. The Archives also preserved fifty letters by Benjamin, the only ones by him yet found. The two letters from Benjamin to Charlotte are reprinted in full in footnotes, and generous excerpts from the rest are also included in footnotes, bringing a shadowy figure to life.
As a personal note, I would like to add that to spend twenty-five years in the company of such an accomplished, inventive, and indomitable woman has been my great privilege. I could never have imagined when I embarked on this project in 1978, that the 150 or so letters known at the time would double, and then more than triple to 500—or that I would have the means and the stamina to complete transcribing, annotating, even indexing every last one.
In addition, I am now gathering the essays I have written on Smith’s life and work into a volume, The Celebrated Mrs. Smith: essays on her life, work, and a history of collecting the letters.