Editing Charles Brockden Brown (section)

== Philadelphia Youth ==

Charles Brockden Brown was born on January 17, 1771, into a Quaker family in Philadelphia, the city then serving as capital of both Pennsylvania and the new nation. His family's Friends Meeting membership shaped his early education and provided the intellectual seriousness that his writing would demonstrate. His study of law, which he abandoned for literature, followed conventional paths before his unconventional choice of writing as profession distinguished him from contemporaries who pursued more practical careers.<ref name="kafer">{{cite book |last=Kafer |first=Peter |title=Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic |year=2004 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |location=Philadelphia}}</ref>

His Philadelphia environment provided both material and audience for literary ambition. The city's concentration of publishers, booksellers, and intellectuals during the 1790s created conditions that no other American location could match. His participation in literary clubs and his friendships with other aspiring writers demonstrated that Philadelphia could support intellectual community even if commercial success proved elusive. The yellow fever epidemics that struck Philadelphia during his youth provided material for fiction that combined medical horror with social observation.<ref name="watts"/>

His decision to pursue writing professionally, abandoning legal training that would have provided income, represented commitment that his era rarely rewarded. The difficulty of supporting himself through American literature in the 1790s—without international copyright, without substantial reading public, without publishing infrastructure—made his choice remarkable. Philadelphia's relative advantages could not overcome fundamental obstacles that American authors of his generation faced.<ref name="kafer"/>