Charlotte Smith

Born in London on May 4, 1749, Charlotte Smith became one of the most widely read English writers of the late eighteenth century. She wrote poetry, novels, and children's books, and her Elegiac Sonnets is especially remembered for helping revive the sonnet in English.

Much of her writing grew out of real pressure in her own life. An unhappy marriage and long financial troubles pushed her toward professional authorship, and that urgency gave her work an unusual directness and emotional force. Readers and later writers alike noticed her gift for combining personal feeling with close attention to the natural world.

Smith died on October 28, 1806, in Surrey, but her influence lasted well beyond her lifetime. She is now often recognized as an important forerunner of Romanticism, admired for the way her writing joins lyrical beauty with sympathy for people facing loss, inequality, and social constraint.