Susanna Rowson
English-born American novelist, poet, playwright, religious writer, stage actress, educator, geographer
- Lived
- 1762–1824
Updated September 2026
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About Susanna Rowson
Susanna Rowson, née Haswell, was a British-American novelist, poet, playwright, religious writer, stage actress, and educator. She was the first woman geographer and an early supporter of female education. She also wrote against slavery.
Rowson was the author of the 1791 novel Charlotte Temple, the most popular best-seller in American literature until Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, was published serially in 1851–1852, and authored the first human geography textbook Rowson's Abridgement of Universal Geography in 1805.
Biography from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Authors like Susanna Rowson
Sources: book lists and dates from Wikidata and Open Library, ratings from Open Library readers, free texts from Project Gutenberg. Last updated September 2026.