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.

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.

In this excellent book, Lucia McMahon presents the life and career of Elizabeth Smith (1776–1806), an English writer and scholar who became an impactful role model for women, and whose posthumous reputation eclipsed that of many of her contemporaries. . . Drawing on an impeccable collection of archival and printed sources, McMahon presents a detailed reception history of Smith’s works, creating a bibliography that will be an invaluable resource for future scholars. . . She also provides a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations for the publication of Fragments, for which Smith’s mother provided a portrait, based on a drawing of her daughter by John George Wood. . . The portrait, presented as part of a pleasing collage on the front of McMahon’s book, has a simplicity to it which, like the story of Elizabeth Smith, has captivated readers for more than two hundred years.