Charles Brockden Brown
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) was a Philadelphia-born writer often credited as America's first professional novelist, his gothic fiction predating and influencing Edgar Allan Poe while establishing Philadelphia as early American literature's center. His novels, including "Wieland" (1798) and "Edgar Huntly" (1799), combined psychological intensity with American settings to create a distinctly national literature that broke from British models. Brown's career, though brief and commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, demonstrated that American writers could produce serious fiction rather than merely imitating European forms, his Philadelphia foundation essential to this literary pioneering.[1]
Philadelphia Youth
[edit | edit source]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.[2]
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.[1]
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.[2]
Literary Achievement
[edit | edit source]Brown's major novels, produced in a remarkable burst between 1798 and 1801, established conventions that American gothic fiction would elaborate. "Wieland" (1798), involving religious fanaticism and ventriloquism, explored the dangers of misplaced faith in ways that American experience made resonant. "Edgar Huntly" (1799), featuring sleepwalking and frontier violence, used American landscape for psychological exploration that European settings could not provide. "Arthur Mervyn" (1799-1800), set during Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic, combined disease horror with social criticism.[1]
His narrative innovations—unreliable narrators, psychological complexity, American settings treated seriously—anticipated developments that later writers would receive credit for pioneering. His influence on Poe, acknowledged by the later writer, and on Hawthorne demonstrates that his work, though commercially unsuccessful, entered the American literary tradition through writers who recognized his achievement. His Philadelphia settings, particularly the yellow fever sequences, provided local specificity that gave his work authenticity absent from imitative fiction.[2]
His magazine editing and political writing, which occupied his later years as novel-writing ceased, demonstrated literary abilities applied to different forms. The financial difficulties that plagued his career, leading to his return to mercantile employment, illustrated the era's obstacles to professional authorship. His death from tuberculosis at age thirty-nine cut short a career whose potential his completed work suggested without fully realizing.[1]
Legacy
[edit | edit source]Charles Brockden Brown died on February 22, 1810, in Philadelphia, his reputation rising after death as American literary history required figures who had preceded more celebrated authors. His designation as America's first professional novelist, though debatable in its specifics, acknowledges his significance in establishing that American fiction could address serious themes in serious ways. His Philadelphia origins and settings connect the city to American literature's beginnings, his career demonstrating that Philadelphia could produce foundational literary achievement even if recognition awaited posthumous reassessment.[2]