Charlotte Turner

1749 - 1806  (57 years)

• Name	Charlotte Turner
  Birth	4 May 1749	London, England   [1, 2]
  Baptism	12 Jun 1749	Stoke Church, Stoke Park, near Guildford, Surrey, England   [3]
  Gender	Female
  Death	28 Oct 1806	Tilford, Surrey, England   [1, 2]
  Burial	Stoke Church, Stoke Park, near Guildford, Surrey, England   [1]
  Person ID	I29779	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	2 Sep 2020

  
  

  Father	Nicholas Turner,   b. Abt 1721   d. Bef 1776 (Age ~ 54 years)
  Mother	Anna Towers,   b. Abt 1727   d. Abt 1752 (Age ~ 25 years)
  Marriage	Jan 1748  [3]
  Family ID	F17771	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Benjamin Smith,   b. 21 Jul 1742   d. 26 Feb 1806, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, England (Age 63 years)
  Marriage	23 Feb 1765  [1, 3]
  Family ID	F17769	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	2 Sep 2020

  
  

• Notes

  As Charlotte Smith, she is remembered as a poet, novelist, social radical, and a correspondent and associates of Coleridge, Erasmus Darwin, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Ann Radcliffe, Robert Southey, and many other contemporaries of note. From Wikipedia (accessed 2 Sep 2020): Charlotte Turner Smith […] was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility. She published ten novels, three books of poetry, four children's books, and other assorted works over the course of her career. She saw herself as a poet first and foremost, poetry at that period being considered the most exalted form of literature. Scholars now credit her with transforming the sonnet into an expression of woeful sentiment. During adulthood, Charlotte Smith eventually left husband Benjamin Smith and began writing to support their children. Smith's struggle to provide for her children and her frustrated attempts to gain legal protection as a woman provided themes for her poetry and novels; she included portraits of herself and her family in her novels as well as details about her life in her prefaces. Her early novels are exercises in aesthetic development, particularly of the Gothic and sentimentality. Her later novels, including The Old Manor House, often considered her best, supported the ideals of the French Revolution. After 1798, however, Smith's popularity waned and by 1803 she was destitute and ill – she could barely hold a pen, and sold her books to pay off her debts. In 1806, Smith died. Largely forgotten by the middle of the 19th century, her works have now been republished and she is recognized as an important Romantic writer. —— Her collections of poetry include Elegiac Sonnets (1784), The Emigrants (1793), and Beachy Head and Other Poems (1807). Her ten novels include Emmeline; or The Orphan of the Castle (1788), Celestina (1791), Desmond (1792), The Old Manor House (1793), and Marchmont (1796) Her several works for children include Rural Walks (1795). —— Following the marriage of Charlotte Turner to Benjamin Smith on 23 Feb 1765, the couple lived for several months with Benjamin's sister Mary, DDB's 5G-grandmother.

  
  

• Sources

  [S76] The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004-ongoing. [S4313] The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith ed. Judith Phillips Stanton. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003., date only. [S4313] The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith ed. Judith Phillips Stanton. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2003.