Rowson's tale of a young girl who elopes to the United States only to be abandoned by her fiance was once the bestselling novel in American literary history. This edition also includes Lucy Temple, the fascinating story of Charlotte's orphaned daughter.

"Sheppard Lee, Written By Himself" is a satirical work from the early years of the American Republic. It was written in the form as an autobiography and acquired wide acclaim after publishing. The story tells about a young man wishing to find a buried treasure. Instead, he finds the power to transfer his soul into other men's bodies. This results in a picaresque journey through early American pursuits of happiness. But every new form disappoints him. Lee comes to the conclusion that everything in America, even virtue and vice, are interchangeable; everything is an object and has its price.

A unique survey and interpretive history, spanning 200 years, of the American bestseller.

Cathy N. Davidson offers a completely corrected edition, with a new introduction, of Charlotte Temple, the most widely read novel in America until Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Charlotte Temple tells the story of a young English girl, whose liaison with a British officer led her to Revolutionary America, where she was abandoned and died giving birth to an illegitimate child. Though no evidence exists to prove the existence of a real Charlotte, the author insisted that it was a "tale of truth" and wrote it to be "of service to [the]...young and unprotected woman in her first entrance into life."