Writing as “Peter Porcupine,” William Cobbett denounced Rowson as the “American Sappho.” In this scathingly ironic review, he savages her literary work and denigrates her for advancing radical views on gender relations. While criticizing all of it, he saves particular venom for Slaves in Algiers, performed in Philadelphia and then at the Federal Street Theatre.

The authoress insists upon the superiority of her sex, and in so doing, she takes care to express herself in such a correct, nervous, and elegant style, as puts her own superiority, at least, out of all doubt.

Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society