Ormond: Or the Secret Witness [Library Binding]

Charles Brockden Brown (Author)

Product Details

• Library Binding
• Publisher: Reprint Services Corporation (November 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078122067X
• ISBN-13: 978-0781220675
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Get To Know the Father of American Fiction, November 22, 2001

By 

Neil Meyer (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ormond (Broadview Literary Texts Series) (Paperback)

Although this is not Brown's greatest work (Edgar Huntly and Weiland are superior) it is still a compelling work. Brown has taken the Gothic genre and manipulated it's stock images and characters to create unqiue worlds. The novel starts off slowly, but builds as Constantia unwittingly comes under the influence of Ormond. We are never certain whether we are steeped in a stereotypical Gothic world or perhaps uncomfortable close to reality.
Typical of Brown, the ending is deceptively complete. As an author attempting to understand that anxieties and fears of the New Republic, Brown addresses an American readership with themes that are still compelling today. The limitations of reason, the limitations of morality, and the place of faith in our lives.
Brown's four Gothic novels should be read together, to get a complete sense of his concerns for the nation, but the Library of America thoughtlessly left this novel out with their printing of Brown's works. One can only hope that with the continuing interest in Brown's fiction this novel will become available to the reading public.