Prefiguring the work of Poe, Hawthorne, and Faulkner, as well as the entire tradition of American noir and horror, Brockden Brown was America's first professional novelist. This volume collects his most significant works: "Wieland; or The Transformation" (1798), about a religious fanatic preyed upon by a sinister ventriloquist; "Arthur Mervyn; Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793" (1799), with its devastating depiction of a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia; and "Edgar Huntly; or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker" (1799), which recasts traditional Gothic themes in the American wilderness.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
O! What splendid fortune that the Library of America should be so generous as to rescue from the mists of oblivion such an author as Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). This son of Pennslyvania Quakers was sent forth to obtain an education in preparation for an eventual career in the law, but then he came upon the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Samuel Richardson, whose novels inspired Brown to embark upon a literary career of his own. Years of poverty and ill health--for young Brown was a consumptive--followed, and then, within a four-year period, he would produce seven novels, three of which have been gathered in this volume.
Here you will encounter a young man, newly arrived in the city of Philadelphia, caught in the grip of the yellow fever, whose employer is revealed as an adulterous, murderous fiend (Arthur Mervyn). You will be introduced to the protagonist of Edgar Huntly, whose efforts to unmask the killer of his best friend launch him into a somnabulent landscape drenched with the blood of cougars and Indians. And, in Wieland, you will confront, along with Clara, the dreadful threat posed by the master of ventriloquism! You may scoff at such terrors, O jaded reader, steeped in the demonic gore and Freudian underpinnings of contemporary horror and suspense, but know this--the outpourings of the fevered imagination of Charles Brockden Brown--who lived and wrote well before Poe, before Lovecraft--are a vital source of the power the Gothic continues to have over the American reader today. V.C. Andrews, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Patterson ... these and so many more (even, some whisper, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison) live under the gloomy shadow of Brown's melodramas. How long, reader, before you, too, have succumbed to their 18th-century charms?
From Library Journal
This latest Library of America volume combines Wieland (1798), Arthur Mervyn (1799), and Edgar Huntly (1799). All three portray murder, madness, religious obsession, the dangers of the wild, and jolly things like that. This also contains notes on the texts and a chronology of the author's life.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a seminal classic,
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This review is from: Charles Brockden Brown : Three Gothic Novels : Wieland / Arthur Mervyn / Edgar Huntly (Library of America) (Hardcover)
Charles Brockden Brown is known as the "Father of the American novel" and is considered to be our first professional author. At least by those who do consider him at all. To be perfectly frank, I'd never really heard of the guy before now. But this excellent gothic tale, which was based on the true story of a farmer who thought that angels had commanded him to kill his own family, is so clearly the forerunner of the fiction of everyone from Hawthorne and Melville to Poe and Henry James to H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard right on up to Shirley Jackson and Stephen King, that it is hard to believe that his work is not better known nor taught more often.Wieland, his first novel, tells the story of a religious fanatic who builds a temple in the seclusion of his own farm, but then is struck dead, apparently by spontaneous combustion. Several years later, his children, in turn, begin to hear voices around the family property, voices which alternately seem to be commanding good or evil and which at times imitate denizens of the farm. Are the voices somehow connected to a mysterious visitor who has begun hanging around? Are they commands from God? From demons? Suffice it to say things get pretty dicey before we find out the truth. This is a terrific creepy story which obviously influenced the course of American fiction. Brown develops an interesting serious theme of the role that reason can play in combating superstition and religious mania, but keeps the action cranking and the mood deliciously gloomy. The language is certainly not modern but it is accessible and generally understandable. It's a novel that should be better known and more widely read, if not for historical reasons then just because it's great fun. GRADE: A
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dark Patriarch,
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This review is from: Charles Brockden Brown : Three Gothic Novels : Wieland / Arthur Mervyn / Edgar Huntly (Library of America) (Hardcover)
I was pleased to see that the editorial review of this (typically gorgeous) Library of America series entry stole my breath. Brockden Brown's fascinating and brutal gothic novels are the true foundation of what's dark about American literature. Perhaps even more irresponsible than Poe in his fascination with the grotesque (spontaneous combustion, anyone?), Brockden Brown long anticipates Poe and Freud (and Faulkner and Jackson and ...) in his bleak explorations of our most terrible fears, and our worst secrets. Without scenes like the axe murder in "Wieland," would we have King's (or Kubrick's) "The Shining"? Impossible. Let's hope that the Library of America will add a Volume 2 to this one, including Brockden Brown's lesser known (and impossible to find) works like "Ormond."
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Introduction to a Neglected and Important American Writer,
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This review is from: Charles Brockden Brown : Three Gothic Novels : Wieland / Arthur Mervyn / Edgar Huntly (Library of America) (Hardcover)
One of the joys of the Library of America has been how the LOA has breathed new life into long forgotten and neglected writers. Like William Dean Howells and William Maxwell, Charles Brockden Brown's works have been discovered again thanks in large part to the apotheosis of being published by the LOA. Based in Philadelphia, Brown was a leading writer of the 1790s and first decade of the nineteenth century. While Brown certainly shaped certain gothic strands of the American literary tradition, his influence did not end there. Mary Shelley and Margaret Fuller both admired Brown and one suspects that Brown's strong female protagonists may be one of the chief reasons.
"Three Gothic Novels" includes almost all of Brown's novels though there are important books missing. "Wieland" is a spooky story involving a ventriloquist and how he impacted the dark legacy of a family. "Arthur Mervyn" offers a harrowing look at Philadelphia during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and, if not as good as DeFoe looking at 1666, Brown shows how society broke down during an outbreak. With such various themes as sleepwalking, revenge, Native Americans, the frontier and various other topics, there is no easy categorization of "Edgar Huntley." All of these tales are dark, suspenseful and, haunting. While he is excellent in building a plot, revealing characters and keeping a reader on the edge of his seat, Brown is not for everyone but it must be conceded he is not as difficult for the uninitiated reader as many 18th century writers. While these novels generally involve what would now be labeled as horror, Brown was not adverse to confronting the issues of his age and it is a pity that the LOA has not yet collected his "Alcuin" that deals with gender roles and marriage and "Ormond" which is an action tale dealing with gender roles, the Enlightenment, the influences of the French Revolution and, of all things, lesbianism. Still, while the LOA could have included more, what they produced is excellent. Brown is an important and solid writer who can still be enjoyed two centuries after his death. Unlike Washington Irving or Cooper or any of the later founders of American literature, Brown never quite got his due but then he died young and did not produce many books. While Brown never reached the levels of Poe or Hawthorne or Irving or even Simms, he was an important writer who can still be enjoyed today. Readers are once again in debt to the LOA for helping bring another great American writer out of obscurity and into our libraries and onto our bookshelves.
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