The Coquette

Reprinted in its entirety with a new introduction by Cathy N. Davidson, The Coquette, one of the two "best-selling" American novels of the 18th century, tells the much-publicized story of the seduction and death of Elizabeth Whitman, a poet from Hartford, Connecticut. Courted by two men, then suddenly abandoned when both marry other women, Eliza Wharton (as Whitman is called in the novel) willfully enters into a relationship with one of them and dies giving birth at a roadside inn. Wharton emerges in the story as a realistic character, whose dilemma is treated in a serious fashion.