Lucy Brewer - Beyond The Legend

Beyond The Legend

According to Daniel A. Cohen, editor of a The Female Marine and Related Works: Narratives of Cross-Dressing and Urban Vice in America's Early Republic, the true author of The Female Marine was probably Nathaniel Hill Wright. Wright was a young Massachusetts writer acquainted with Nathaniel Coverly, the printer of the The Female Marine. Cohen writes:

At the time of the first appearance of The Female Marine, Nathaniel Hill Wright was in his late twenties, a family man with a wife and at least one small child, evidently struggling to make ends meet. While none of this proves that Wright was the author of the female-marine narratives, his political affiliation, sexual history, literary predilections, self-characterization, and personal circumstances – along with the newspaper reference identifying "Mr. Wright" as Coverly's hack – all tend to make him a very plausible candidate. —Introduction to The Female Marine and Related Works, page 5

Joan Druett writes that "Coverly could have been inspired by a fellow opportunist, Robert Kirby of London,", who published the tale of Mary Anne Talbot, an Englishwoman who served as a man in the Napoleonic wars. At any rate, Coverly's decision to publish the Lucy Brewer books was a sound one, as they became extremely popular. (Coverly also published the story of Almira Paul, figure similar to Lucy Brewer, who is probably also fictional.) At least 19 editions of The Female Marine were published between 1815 and 1818. The books were aimed at sailors, prostitutes, and (in particular) "juveniles." Surviving copies, when signed, mostly bear the names of women, and are "typically worn and tattered – suggesting that many of the modest volumes were literally read to pieces by their eager purchasers."

Alexander Medlicott notes that The Female Marine is the "first American novel to employ a woman warrior as the focal point of the action" – though the History of Constantius and Pulchera; or, Virtue rewarded bears small similarities. Interestingly, while Constantius and Pulchera was published anonymously in 1795, an 1831 edition included a poem by Nathaniel Hill Wright, and is often listed in library catalogs as, including the Constantius and Pulchera novel, being authored by Wright.

The official first female Marine was Opha Mae Johnson, though in 2001, a Marines message honored the achievements of women in the Marine Corps who form a "unique lineage can trace its roots back to Lucy Brewer, the legendary woman who served aboard the USS Constitution during the War of 1812."