Brown, Charles Brockden (1771–1810), after a brief career as a lawyer in his native Philadelphia, moved to New York to become the first professional author of the U.S. Under the influence of William Godwin, he wrote
Alcuin: A Dialogue (1798), a treatise on the rights of women. Further stimulated by Godwin's
Caleb Williams and his own critical ideas of fiction, Brown in two frenetic years composed his four best novels,
Wieland (1798),
Arthur Mervyn (1799),
Ormond (1799), and
Edgar Huntly (1799), quickly followed by
Clara Howard (1801), which was published in England as
Philip Stanley, and
Jane Talbot (1801). These Gothic romances were carefully documented in fact and pseudo‐science, and influenced by the moral purpose of Godwin, the sentimentalism and psychology of Richardson, and above all the horrors of the school of Mrs. Radcliffe. After this brief burst of fiction, Brown entered business, although he also edited
The Monthly Magazine and American Register and
The Literary Magazine and American Register and did such hackwork as the
Memoirs of Carwin. He held high critical standards concerning American literature, believed in using distinctively American materials and in writing novels whose ideas would stir thinkers while their plots would attract ordinary readers. Although Brown was appreciated by Keats, Shelley, and Scott, and even influenced his own master, Godwin, he failed to achieve his aims because of his haste, immaturity, stilted language, fascination by the pathological, and inability to master completely the Godwinian plot structure. Despite his failings, his Gothic romances transferred to an American setting have a dark emotional intensity that gives his work more than historical significance.
William Dunlap wrote a biography of Brown (1815). A scholarly edition of his works began publication in 1977.
