01-05-2008, 09:47 PM
I just discovered this author and added him to my ever-growing "to read" list.
It's a man!!
Charles Brockden Brown is apparently considered by some to be the American answer to Ann Radcliffe, although others disagree vehemently with this observation. Here's some information from Wikipedia and a list of his novels. Sounds good enough to me, but I think we should each define what we ourselves accept as "Gothic.".
...Brown's novels combine several revolutionary-era fiction subgenres with other types of late-Enlightenment scientific and medical knowledges. Most notably, they develop the British radical-democratic models of Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Holcroft and combine these with elements of German "Schauer-romantik" gothic from Friedrich Schiller, the enlightened sentimental fictions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Laurence Sterne, women's domestic novels by writers such as Fanny Burney or Hannah Webster Foster, and other genres such as captivity narrative. Brown builds plots around particular motifs such as sleepwalking and religious mania, drawing on Enlightenment medical writings by figures such as Erasmus Darwin.
Of the seven extant novels, 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 1815 biography, remained little-read until the end of the twentieth century, but is notable as the first US novel to thematize same-sex sexuality. Clara Howard and Jane Talbot have sometimes been regarded as relatively conventional works distinct from the earlier novels because they return to classic epistolary form and focus on domestic issues that, at first glance, seem far-removed from the more violent and sensational world of the first four novels. Recent scholarship (since the 1980s), however, has largely revised this view and emphasizes the continuities and overall coherence of all seven novels understood as a loosely unified ensemble.
The novels, in their order of publication, are:
1. ) Sky-Walk; or, The Man Unknown to Himself (completed by March 1798 and partially typeset, but subsequently lost and never published)
2. ) Wieland; or, the Transformation (September 1798)
3. ) Ormond; or, the Secret Witness (January, 1799)
4. a) Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 (May 1799)
5. ) Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (August 1799)
6. ) Memoirs of Stephen Calvert (serialized from June 1799 to June 1800)
7. b) Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793, Second Part (September 1800)
8. ) Clara Howard; In a Series of Letters (June 1801)
9. ) Jane Talbot; A Novel (December 1801)
It's a man!!
Charles Brockden Brown is apparently considered by some to be the American answer to Ann Radcliffe, although others disagree vehemently with this observation. Here's some information from Wikipedia and a list of his novels. Sounds good enough to me, but I think we should each define what we ourselves accept as "Gothic.".
...Brown's novels combine several revolutionary-era fiction subgenres with other types of late-Enlightenment scientific and medical knowledges. Most notably, they develop the British radical-democratic models of Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Holcroft and combine these with elements of German "Schauer-romantik" gothic from Friedrich Schiller, the enlightened sentimental fictions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Laurence Sterne, women's domestic novels by writers such as Fanny Burney or Hannah Webster Foster, and other genres such as captivity narrative. Brown builds plots around particular motifs such as sleepwalking and religious mania, drawing on Enlightenment medical writings by figures such as Erasmus Darwin.
Of the seven extant novels, 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 1815 biography, remained little-read until the end of the twentieth century, but is notable as the first US novel to thematize same-sex sexuality. Clara Howard and Jane Talbot have sometimes been regarded as relatively conventional works distinct from the earlier novels because they return to classic epistolary form and focus on domestic issues that, at first glance, seem far-removed from the more violent and sensational world of the first four novels. Recent scholarship (since the 1980s), however, has largely revised this view and emphasizes the continuities and overall coherence of all seven novels understood as a loosely unified ensemble.
The novels, in their order of publication, are:
1. ) Sky-Walk; or, The Man Unknown to Himself (completed by March 1798 and partially typeset, but subsequently lost and never published)
2. ) Wieland; or, the Transformation (September 1798)
3. ) Ormond; or, the Secret Witness (January, 1799)
4. a) Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 (May 1799)
5. ) Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (August 1799)
6. ) Memoirs of Stephen Calvert (serialized from June 1799 to June 1800)
7. b) Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793, Second Part (September 1800)
8. ) Clara Howard; In a Series of Letters (June 1801)
9. ) Jane Talbot; A Novel (December 1801)