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Of the seven novels extant, the first four to be published in book form Wieland , Ormond , Edgar Huntly , and Arthur Mervyn have received the lion's share of commentary and attention. Because of their sensational violence, dramatic intensity, and intellectual complexity, these four novels are often referred to as the "Gothic" or "Godwinian" novels.
Stephen Calvert , which appeared only in serialized form and in the posthumous biography, remained little-read until the end of the 20th century, but is notable as the first U. Clara Howard and Jane Talbot have been regarded sometimes as relatively conventional works distinct from the earlier novels because they have classic epistolary form and concern domestic issues that seem very different from the violence and sensationalism of the first four novels.
Recent scholarship since the s , however, has largely revised this view and emphasizes the continuities and overall coherence of all seven novels understood as a loosely unified ensemble. After Brown continued to publish prolifically. He authored several important political pamphlets arguing for the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory and against the Embargo Act of He edited and was primary contributor to two more magazines: The Literary Magazine and American Register — , a miscellany on cultural and other topics from geography and medicine to history and aesthetics and The American Register and General Repository of History, Politics, and Science — The latter is notable for the book-length "Annals of Europe and America," Brown's contemporary historical narrative of Napoleonic geopolitics.
Brown continued to write fiction and experiment with other literary genres during this period, notably in the Historical Sketches , a group of historical fictions that were written between and but published only posthumously. These late experimental narratives show Brown exploring the interface of fiction and history at the end of the Revolutionary era, at a moment that both follows the great Enlightenment historians e.
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He also published miscellaneous pieces in other Philadelphia newspapers and magazines of the 19th century including the Aurora and, in , the Port-Folio. In addition to these pamphlets, magazines, and historical narratives, it is notable that Brown maintained his contacts with reformist and progressive individuals and institutions in 19th-century Philadelphia.
Although it was never completed, Brown planned from to , with close friend Thomas Pym Cope, to publish a "History of Slavery" using the records of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Benjamin Rush recommended Brown in as an ideal author for a history of penal reform in Philadelphia. Brown maintained a well-informed interest in these sorts of reformist institutions and since the early s had regularly visited new, pioneering hospitals and prisons such as Philadelphia's Walnut Street Prison or Pennsylvania Hospital with friends from his New York circle.
In addition, he contracted to publish a major introduction to geography during his last years, but the manuscript is now lost. Politically, Brown has been an enigma, but more recent scholarship considers Brown as having, for instance, few or no associations with a Federalist political agenda and instead divorcing himself from the ideology of America as an exemplary nation, and desiring "political justice" on both sides of the Atlantic.
Brown died of tuberculosis in Philadelphia on February 22, , at the age of A cenotaph was placed in his honor at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. Although Brown's writings did not achieve immediate commercial success, he was republished in both the U. His novels were the first American novels translated into other European languages: Ormond was published in German where it was attributed to Godwin in , and a French version of Wieland appeared in An abridged version of William Dunlap 's posthumous biography of him was also reprinted in England in The most important group of writers influenced by Brown during this period was the Godwin-Shelley circle mentioned above, but Brown was read and recommended by many other major British writers of this era, notably William Hazlitt , Thomas Love Peacock , John Keats , and Walter Scott.
Neal in American Writers — contended that only Brown, himself, and James Kirke Paulding , had written anything that could be called authentically American literature. The contemporary era of interest in Brown begins with the publication of a modern scholarly edition of Brown's novels, the six-volume Kent State "Bicentennial Edition" that was organized by Sydney J.
Krause and S. Mainly because of his parents' objection to marriage "out of meeting," he remained a bachelor until , when he married the Presbyterian Elizabeth Linn.
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After the experimental novel Alcuin , in which he expressed William Godwin 's ideas on social justice and woman's rights, he undertook to Americanize the then popular Gothic novel of horrors. He gave it a local setting in the towns and untamed countryside he knew so well and added to its horrors from his knowledge of the pseudosciences and morbid psychology of his day.
His was a complex personality, and his intense concern for moral issues was reflected in swift-moving plots; he produced in rapid succession Wieland , Arthur Merwyn , Ormond , and Edgar Huntly Spontaneous combustion, sleepwalking, ventriloquism, compulsive behavior, and other scientific interests of the time often provided rational explanations for the seemingly occult mysteries that held suspense at a high level throughout the complex and often unresolved plots of these novels.
Brown's skills, however, in dealing with extremes of character, swift-moving action, and a shifting narrative point of view gave them reader interest far beyond any other writing of the day. Although recognized in his own time as a promising novelist, Brown was soon forced by illness and lack of financial success to turn to the editing of journals, in which his literary nationalism was tempered by his sound esthetic judgment of the work of others.
William cullen bryant: Charles Brockden Brown (January 17, – February 22, ) was an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period. Brown is regarded by some scholars as the most important American novelist before James Fenimore Cooper.
His last years were devoted to the more commonplace novels Clara Howard and Jane Talbot both and to effective tracts on current national problems. Living at a time when a professional literary life was impractical because of the disorganized state of American intellectual society, Brown used his powerful, though imperfect, gifts to open many of the avenues which later writers like Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne , and Herman Melville followed to achieve their masterworks.
The best general biography of Brown is Harry R. Donald A. Ringe, Charles Brockden Brown , provides a critical analysis of his major works, in biographical form. Brown, Charles Brockden gale. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. Charles Brockden Brown gale. Charles Brockden Brown The American novelist and magazine editor Charles Brockden Brown was a predecessor of Edgar Allan Poe in horror fiction and a critic of contemporary literature.
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Caroline von Wolzogen. George Henry Calvert. Aziz Nesin. His novelist descendant used the library all his life, but only became a shareholder in , the year before his death. His share was acquired by guest curator Neil K. Fitzgerald three decades ago. Historical Society of Pennsylvania. William Dunlap.
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The Life of Charles Brockden Brown. The Brown family then called in his old friend William Dunlap whose portrait of Brown hangs above this case , to finish the job. The editorial marks in the proof show him excising irrelevant and distasteful material while reusing much of the already-set type. He then added a second volume of new material and published it under his own name as The Life of Charles Brockden Brown in New York, Green , Librarian.
A country rustic migrates to Philadelphia just in time to experience the horrors of the yellow fever epidemic of