Charlotte Temple

A fifteen-year-old schoolgirl is persuaded to leave England with an officer who promises marriage in New York. Rowson published it in 1791 and it outsold everything in America until Uncle Tom's Cabin - readers went looking for Charlotte's grave in Trinity churchyard, and someone obligingly provided one. It is a warning tale that made its author rich and its heroine a national relic. Sixty plates by painters including Gainsborough and Greuze carry the mood of the tale through portraits, landscapes and stormy sea pieces.