dumbfoundry

Charlotte Smith’s adolescence is racy even by today’s hectic standards. Having lost her mother at the age of three, she left school at twelve, married at fifteen, and at sixteen gave birth in the East End of London. By the time she separated from Benjamin Smith, in 1787, a month before her thirty-eighth birthday, she had had twelve pregnancies, done time with her debtor husband in the King’s Bench Prison (where the inmates twice attempted to blow their way out) and joined him in exile in France (where child number twelve was stolen by the local priests for Catholic baptism). [...]

Such an existence does not seem best calculated to produce works of art. Yet what made Smith unlucky in life was in many ways what made her lucky in literature. [...]

This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy on Friday, June 18, 2004 at 8:17 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.