Susanna Rowson, née Haswell (1762-1824) was a British- American novelist, poet, playwright, religious writer, stage actress and educator. Rowson was the author of the novel Charlotte Temple (1791) - the most popular bestseller in American literature until Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). It was as a governess that she wrote her first work, Victoria, dedicated to the Duchess of Devonshire, published in 1786, and in the same year she married William Rowson, a hardware merchant and horse guards trumpeter, and the two turned to acting. In 1793 she joined the theatre company of Thomas Wignell, performing in Philadelphia. Over the next three years there she wrote a novel, an opera, a musical farce about the Whiskey Rebellion, a poetical address to the American troops, and several songs for the company in addition to performing 57 roles on the stage in two seasons. Amongst her other works are: The Inquisitor (1788), Mary; or, The Test of Honour (1789), Slaves of Algiers (1794), The Female Patriot (1795), Trials of the Human Heart (1795), The Volunteers (1795), Reuben and Rachel (1798), Miscellaneous Poems (1811), and Sara; or, The Examplary Wife (1813).