Tabitha Gilman Tenney

Who was Tabitha Gilman Tenney?

Tabitha Gilman Tenney was an early American author from Exeter, New Hampshire. Her novel Female Quixotism, Exhibited in the Romantic Opinions and Extravagant Adventures of Dorcasina Sheldon, which followed Cervantes in attacking the delusions encouraged by romantic literature, was first published in two volumes in 1801.

Literary historian F. L. Patee has described Female Quixotism as the most popular novel written in America prior to the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. Female Quixotism went through at least five editions and was still in print when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her landmark book.

In 1788 she married Samuel Tenney, a former army surgeon. He was elected to Congress in 1788. They had no children.

Upon her 1837 death in Exeter, she was buried at the Winter Street Burial Ground.