Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette is probably the finest of the sentimental novels of the early national period. Psychologically astute, wellplotted, and carefully written, the novel portrays sensitively the life and death of Elizabeth Whitman, an accomplished poet of the day. In its depiction of an intelligent and strong-willed heroine, the novel transcends many of the conventions of its time and place.

Born in Salisbury, Massachusetts, the daughter of Grant Webster, a Boston merchant, and Hannah Wainwright Webster, Hannah Webster was sent to boarding school in 1762 after her mother died. Although virtually nothing is known of her childhood and adolescence, comments in The Boarding School suggest that she found her own schooling to be exemplary. In 1785 she married the Reverend John Foster, a Dartmouth College graduate who went on to serve as pastor of the First Church in Brighton, Massachusetts. The couple had six children.

The Coquette was...