Charles Brockden Brown

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Charles Brockden Brown

Charles Brockden Brown 1771-1810, American novelist and editor, b. Philadelphia, considered the first professional American novelist. After the publication of Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798), he wrote such novels as Edgar Huntly (1799), Arthur Mervyn (2 vol., 1799-1800), and Ormond (1799), in which he presented arguments for social reform. Wieland (1799) was by far his most popular work and foreshadowed the psychological novel. To support himself after 1800 he became a merchant but also edited successively three periodicals, wrote political pamphlets, and projected a compendium on geography.

Bibliography: See B. Rosenthal, ed., Critical Essays on Charles Brockden (1981); A. Axelrod, Charles Brockden Brown: An American Tale (1983).

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Brown, Charles Brockden

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | | Â© The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Brown, Charles Brockden (1771–1810), acclaimed as the first professional American author, is remembered for his four Gothic novels Wieland (1798), Arthur Mervyn (1799), Ormond (1799), and Edgar Huntly (1799). Although obviously indebted to Godwin and A. Radcliffe, these were pioneer works which gave Gothic romance an American setting, and Brown's psychological interest in obsession, seduction, madness, and cruelty made him a precursor of Poe.

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Brown, Charles Brockden." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 18 Dec. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Brown, Charles Brockden." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (December 18, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-BrownCharlesBrockden.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Brown, Charles Brockden." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved December 18, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-BrownCharlesBrockden.html

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Free newspaper and magazine articles

	Private Property: Charles Brockden Brown's Gendered Economics of Virtue.(Review) Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 7/1/1999
	Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature, 1787-1845. Magazine article from: Yearbook of English Studies; 1/1/2001
	The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel. Magazine article from: Yearbook of English Studies; 1/1/2000

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