During the summer of 2023 Ruby Mead and I worked with Professor Jessica Leiman on her book project “Novel Pursuits: Fictionality, Reading, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel,” which explores eighteenth-century readers’ quixotic responses to early fiction. We had worked with Jessica before and took her Seductive Fictions class in the spring, in which we read Charlotte Temple. This project was proposed to introduce us to more extensive academic research, specifically the navigation of print material (newspapers, pamphlets, guidebooks) in online databases. We were assigned the task of poring through these databases to find mentions of the two heroines’ graves, their movements, real-life places on which the literary locations were based, information about the authors, and reactions to the novels. Ruby and I each took a few databases and began work.
I went through two major databases: American Periodicals and Gale Primary Sources, to find information about the graves of Eliza Wharton and Charlotte Temple. Though these two characters are fictional, there is convincing evidence that they are based on real historical figures. While Wharton is almost indisputably based on the Connecticut-born Elizabeth Whitman, Charlotte Temple may or not be based on the New Yorker Charlotte Stanley, granddaughter of the Earl of Derby. After the two novels that fictionalized and immortalized these two women, The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster and Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson, became best-sellers, two gravestones appeared, each claiming to contain the remains of the two novels’ heroines. When news of these gravestones spread, faithful readers began making pilgrimages to their locations to pay their respects to the fallen protagonists. Despite both texts’ claim to truth—Charlotte Temple even being subtitled “a tale of Truth”—these gravestones represent the blurring of fact and fiction that became increasingly prominent in the reception and dissemination of 18th-century novels.
This work was challenging in a few unexpected ways. Firstly, repeated results with search term variations necessitated a close review of each source to prevent duplicates. Not only did the same results appear under different search terms, but certain sources were filed in both databases and had to be filtered out accordingly. Secondly, certain texts (most notably the two primary texts themselves) have gone through dozens of editions since their initial publication. Although the texts are similar, new forwards, prefaces, indexes, notes, and other supplementary material can provide important information about the books’ context, so skipping over new editions was not possible. Thirdly, it was tough to find information about the real-life inspirations for each book without having the names of places or people. When attempting to uncover new findings about a book’s context, I was often unsure of how to refine results to keep things manageable while not excluding potentially revealing results.
Despite these obstacles, I learned a lot during this SRP. On a basic level, the importance of collecting and citing as many primary texts as possible (from reputable sources) was reaffirmed for me. In my academic work at Carleton, I’ve usually only worked with a few primary texts and focused mostly on secondary sources and positioning myself in the critical conversation, but more substantial literary research projects require nearly if not just as much research as historical, anthropological, or sociological ones. Furthermore, this research takes up a substantial amount of time and patience (and money) compared to the writing stage of the project. Many sources will only be mentioned briefly (if at all) in the writing itself but are essential in giving the argument integrity and context.
In our meetings, Jessica gave us some insight into the timeline of a book project, as well as the various ways of acquiring funding and steps in the research process. For example, many of the chapters in an academic book begin as individual essays (that may be published in journals or presented at conferences). From these individual essays, a common theme or thesis can be pinpointed, and from there a book takes shape. Because of the importance of originality and authorial honesty, there are many steps in writing an academic book. However tedious the work may have become, I thoroughly enjoyed making little discoveries, noticing patterns or trends, and watching our combined bibliography grow throughout the SRP. As someone who wants to continue in academia and go to graduate school to study English literature, this SRP was invaluable in adding to my scholarly toolkit and giving me practice with the more technical side of my discipline’s research. I’m also super interested in the theme of Jessica’s book, the line between fact and fiction, and it inspired my own thinking about the 20th-century texts that I will be using in my comps.