Smith's novels were read and assessed by friends who were also writers, as she would return the favour and they found it beneficial to improve and encourage each other's work. Ann Radcliffe, who also wrote Gothic fiction, was among those friends. Along with praise, Smith also received backlash from other writers. "Jane Austen – though she ridiculed Smith's novels, actually borrowed plot, character, and incident from them."[7] John Bennet (1792) wrote that "the little sonnets of Miss Charlotte Smith are soft, pensive, sentimental and pathetic, as a woman's productions should be. The muses, if I mistake not, will, in time, raise her to a considerable eminence. She has, as yet, stepped forth only in little things, with a diffidence that is characteristic of real genius in its first attempts. Her next public entre may be more in style, and more consequential."[8] Smith is never too specific about her republicanism; her ideas rest on the scholars Rousseau, Voltaire Diderot, Montesquieu, and John Locke.[9] "Charlotte Smith tried not to swim too strongly against the current of public view, because she needed to sell her novels in order to provide for her children."[10]
Robert Southey, a poet and contributor to the early Romanticist movement, also sympathised with Smith's hardships. He says, "[although] she has done more and done better than other women writers, it has not been her whole employment — she is not looking out for admiration and talking to show off."[B] In addition to Jane Austen, Henrietta O'Neill, Reverend Joseph Cooper Walker, and Sarah Rose were people Smith saw as trusted friends. Having become famous for marrying into a great Irish home, Henrietta O'Neill, like Austen, provided Smith "with a poetic, sympathetic friendship and with literary connections,"[7] helping her gain an "entry into a fashionable, literary world to which she otherwise had little access; here she almost certainly met Dr. Moore (author of A View of Society and Manners in Italy and Zeluco) and Lady Londonderry.[7]
One of Smith's longest friends and respected mentors was Reverend Joseph Cooper Walker, a Dublin antiquarian and writer. "Walker handled her dealings with John Rice, who published Dublin editions of many of her works. She confided openly in Walker about literary and familial matters."[7] Through publication of personal letters Smith sent to a close companion, Sarah Rose, readers are shown a more positive and joyful side to Smith. Although today his writing is seen as mediocre, William Hayley, another friend of Smith's, was "liked, respected, influential" in their time, especially as he was offered the laureateship on the death of Thomas Warton."[7] As time went on, Hayley Smith withdrew support from her in 1794 and corresponded with her only infrequently. Smith saw Hayley's actions as betrayal; he would often make claims that she was a "Lady of signal sorrows, signal woes." Even with her success as a writer and handful of accredited friends through her lifetime, Smith was "sadly isolated from other writers and literary friends."[7] Although many believed in Hayley's statements, many saw Smith as a "woman of signal achievement, energy, ambition, devotion, and sacrifice. Her children and her literary career evoked from her best efforts, and did so in about equal measure."[7]
