Foster, Hannah Webster. The Coquette or The History of Eliza Wharton.

Boston: Samuel Etheridge, 1797. The first published novel by an American-born woman, its author is the wife of the minister of the First Church in Brighton, who lives at the time at today’s 15 Peaceable Street. The book is a thinly-veiled retelling of the seduction, betrayal, and eventual death in childbirth of Elizabeth Whitman, a distant relative of Rev. Foster, who was the daughter of a Hartford minister and whose seducer was believed to have been the son of Rev. Jonathan Edwards. The book becomes the second most popular book in early 19th century New England, exceeded in sales only by the Bible, but Foster is not credited as the author until 1866, 26 years after her death.