Elizabeth Smith, a learned British woman born in the momentous year 1776, gained transnational fame posthumously for her extensive intellectual accomplishments, which encompassed astronomy, botany, history, poetry, and language studies. As she navigated her place in the world, Smith made a self-conscious decision to keep her many talents hidden from disapproving critics. Therefore, her rise to fame began only in 1808, when her posthumous memoir appeared. In this elegantly written biography, Lucia McMahon reconstructs the places and social constellations that enabled Smith's learning and adventures in England, Wales, and Ireland, and traces her transatlantic fame and literary afterlife across Britain and the United States. Through re-telling Elizabeth Smith's fascinating life story and retracing her posthumous transatlantic fame, McMahon reveals a larger narrative about women's efforts to enact learned and fulfilling lives, and the cultural reactions such aspirations inspired in the early nineteenth century. Although Smith was cast as "exceptional" by her contemporaries and modern scholars alike, McMahon argues that her scholarly achievements, travel explorations, and posthumous fame were all emblematic of the age in which she lived. Offering insights into Romanticism, picturesque tourism, celebrity culture, and women's literary productions, McMahon asks the provocative question, "How many seemingly exceptional women must we uncover in the historical record before we are no longer surprised?"
Lucia McMahon is Professor and Chair of History at William Paterson University and the author of Mere Equals: The Paradox of Educated Women in the Early American Republic.
A delight to read. Lucia McMahon's careful reconstruction of this famous and then obscure 'learned lady' of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries brings Smith out of the historical shadows and will assure the appealing Elizabeth Smith yet another afterlife. Her book also ensures that readers will never think quite the same way about women, genius, and celebrity in the Romantic Era, or about the many so-called 'exceptional' women in any time or place. --Zara Anishanslin, University of Delaware, Author of Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World If Miss Elizabeth Smith had not lived, her contemporaries might have needed to invent her. She climbed mountains, wrote poetry, and learned twelve languages. But like many of her educated female contemporaries, she took care to hide her accomplishments behind a veil of modesty, a modesty seen to be the epitome of femininity of the day. Lucia McMahon's deeply researched book shows us how one remarkable woman threaded the needle to earn posthumous celebrity for her genius and femininity. This book is essential to scholars of gender, education, and transatlantic celebrity. --Carolyn Eastman, Virginia Commonwealth University, author of The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States' First Forgotten Celebrity
