Brown, Charles Brockden

Charles Brockden Brown
17 January 1771 - 21 February 1810

Generally regarded as the first American novelist, Brown is a key figure in the tradition of Gothic fiction, for some of his novels--Edgar Huntly, Wieland, Arthur Mervyn--are responsible for "Americanizing" the Gothic, which in its European incarnation featured imagery (ruined castles, etc) that was simply non-existent, and hence symbolically inert, in America. Brown shifted the settings of his works to American locales--forests, towns, caves, outlying estates -- and relocated the sources of terror, yet retained a Gothic mood of emotional and psychological extremity.

Sites:
Biographical note
[Wikipedia]
Biographical note
[FamousAmericans.net]
Brief biographical note
Bowdoin College Library Special Collections and Archives.
Charles Brockden Brown Society
Scholarly group; includes links to etexts.
Teaching guide to CBB
[Carla Mulford]
Resources for the Study of CBB
Bibliographies and links. [Steve Adams, U Minnesota - Duluth]
click for info from amazon.com
click the cover image for more info from Amazon.com
Three of Brown's classic Gothic thrillers
in one handy package
Brief overview
Kathryn VanSpanckeren
Brief biographical note
[Gothic Labyrinth]
Charles Brockden Brown
Brief biographical note and links. [American Literature on the Web, Akihito Ishikawa, Nagasaki U of Foreign Studies]
Brief biographical note
From The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition (2001) [Bartleby.com]
Brief biographical note a LitGothic etext
[John W. Cousins, A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910]
CB Brown Bibliographies
Features primary and secondary bibliographies. Part of the Perspectives on American Literature site [Paul Reuben, Cal State Stanislaus]
Retrospective
Look back at Brown's achievement. From The Boston Evening Transcript February 26, 1910. [Etext Center, UVa]
Death notice
[Etext Center, UVa]
Bibliography
[FantasticFiction.com]


Etexts:
click for info from amazon.com
click the cover image for more info from Amazon.com
Arthur Mervyn [1799-1800]
- at Munsey's / BlackMask [various formats]

Edgar Huntley [1799]
- at Munsey's / BlackMask [various formats]

Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist
- entire text (160K) or Table of Contents at UVa Etext Center
- at Project Gutenberg (150K)
- at Munsey's / BlackMask [various formats]

Ormond [1799]
- at Munsey's / BlackMask [various formats]

"Somnambulism: A Fragment"
- at LitGothic [PDF]

Wieland [1798]
- entire text (500K) or Table of Contents [UVa]
- at Project Gutenberg (494K)
- at Munsey's / BlackMask [various formats]
-- "Wieland's Madness"
A condensed version of Wieland. (PDF) [Munsey's / BlackMask]
click for more info from amazon.com
click the cover image for more info from amazon.com


Essays and Reviews:
"Charles Brockden Brown's Edgard Huntley as Experimental Novel"
A student essay discussing the moral failings of Edgar Huntley. [Henning Ziegler, Eberhard-Karls-Universitaet, Tuebingen]


Discussion:
CBBNET. Discussion list for Brown at listproc@ukans.edu.

"Charles Brockden Brown."