Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Book Description
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.Download Description
If I am mistaken in my notions of duty, God forbid that I should shut my ears against good counsel. Instead of loathing or shunning it, I am anxious to hear it. I know my own short-sighted folly, my slight experience. I know how apt I am to go astray, how often my own heart deceives me; and hence I always am in search of better knowledge; hence I listen to admonition, not only with docility, but gratitude. My inclination ought, perhaps, to be absolutely neuter; but, if I know myself, it is with reluctance that I withhold my assent from the expostulator. I am delighted to receive conviction from the arguments of those that love me. ... Read more

Amazon.com
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?Book Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Wieland . . . a wonderfully written story
Out of the three novels, I have only read Wieland, but if the other two are as good as this one, I would definitely be willing to read them.

Wieland is one of my all-time favorite books.This novel looks at how religion, the unexplainable (or seemingly unexplainable), and madness affect ordinary people.There are no monsters lurking in the shadows, but the novel does look at how people deal with horror in "real" situations.

Dark Patriarch
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."

a seminal classic
Charles Brockden Brown is known as the "Father of the American novel" and is considered to be ourfirst professional author.At least by those who do consider him at all.To be perfectly frank, I'd neverreally heard of the guy before now.But this excellent gothic tale, which was based on the true story ofa farmer who thought that angels had commanded him to kill his own family,is so clearly theforerunner 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 tobelieve 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 hisown farm, but then is struck dead, apparently by spontaneous combustion.Several years later, hischildren, in turn, begin to hear voices around the family property, voices which alternately seem to becommanding good or evil and which at times imitate denizens of the farm.Are the voices somehowconnected 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.Browndevelops an interesting serious theme of the role that reason can play in combating superstition andreligious mania, but keeps the action cranking and the mood deliciously gloomy.The language iscertainly 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

Almost good enough
The Library of America is providing a valuable service to all devotees of American literature by providing reliable texts of so many important American writers.Here, they have done an excellent job of presenting thethree best novels of America's first professional novelist.However, Brownonly wrote six novels altogether, and anyone who cares about"Wieland," "Edgar Huntly," and "ArthurMervyn" will probably also want "Ormond" in the package, aswell as the fragments "Memoirs of Stephen Calvert" and"Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist."

Almost good enough
The Library of America is providing a valuable service to all devotees of American literature by providing reliable texts of so many important American writers.Here, they have done an excellent job of presenting thethree best novels of America's first professional novelist.However, Brownonly wrote six novels altogether, and anyone who cares about"Wieland," "Edgar Huntly," and "ArthurMervyn" will probably also want "Ormond" in the package, aswell as the fragments "Memoirs of Stephen Calvert" and"Memoirs of Carwin, the Biloquist." ... Read more

Book Description
A shadow falls over the Enlightenment when a stranger pays a visit in this tale of one family's slide down the slippery slope of reality.Featuring spontaneous combustion, demonic ventriloquism, murder and madness, Wieland offers a wealth of high weirdness for fans of the paranormal.The Invisible College Press is pleased to resurrect this forgotten classic of dark literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

I HATED IT!
In short, I HATED this book. But really, that's not fair. I shouldn't say that because even though I was 'forced' to read it for an English class, I never made it through. I think I got about 30 pages into it after maybe a week or two of trying to get involved with it. All to no avail. I hated every minute, and I wish the teacher had never assigned it.

I believe that there is a reason the name "Charles Brockden Brown" isn't nearly the household name that "Ernest Hemingway" or "Shakespeare" is.

Great Gothic!
I had never heard of Charles Brockden Brown before, until I picked up an anthology entitled _American Gothic Tales_. The excerpt from this novel intrigued and horrified me enough that I had to read the entire story. I wasn't disappointed. Ghosts, mysterious voices that drive completely pleasant, complacent people to do mad things - I read the whole thing in a few hours. His storytelling is reminescent of Poe, although that is incorrect to say, as Brown came first. A shame that no one hears about Brown, as he is definitely a classic.

Four stars out of five, because I did not care for the epilogue; it feels a little tacked on.

A Classic of American Gothic Horror
Charles Brockden Brown's importance in the field of American literature is indisputably very high; thus, how unfortunate it is that his works are so unknown to us today.Were it not for H.P. Lovecraft's mention of him in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature," I myself would remain ignorant of his very existence.Brown is arguably the father of the American novel, a brave pioneer in the era of the early Republic.This man set upon himself the noble purpose of writing fiction for a living, going against the wishes of his family and the dictates of contemporary society.Had there been no Charles Brockden Brown, there may never have been a Poe--at least, not Poe as we know him today.

The story is an Americanized Gothic romance.The spirit of Gothic literature pervades the tale, but the setting has been transferred from old castles and courtly settings to a recognizably American rural landscape which is preeminently beautiful rather than spooky.The horrors described so effectively by Brown are borne in the minds of the characters.The female protagonist Clara narrates the tortured history of her family.Her father dies mysteriously, perhaps by spontaneous combustion, ostensibly due to his failure to follow God's will in his life.She enjoys a happy adult life with her brother and his wife until a stranger named Carwin appears and quickly becomes a part of their inner circle.Carwin eventually becomes Clara's tormentor.She, her brother, and their mutual friend Pleyel all hear mysterious, unexplained voices warning them of danger and imparting fateful news on several occasions.Her brother, deeply religious like his father, is greatly affected by these phenomena--how much so we learn later in the novel.Carwin fatefully destroys Clara's life when his evil designs paint her as a harlot in Pleyel's eye.Her unrequited love for Pleyel is now met with his condemnation of her--the agony of the charges against her is particularly poignant in the early American era in which the story takes place.On the fateful night, she discovers Carwin hiding in her home, and he admits to having had murderous designs on her.Her sorrows are greatly magnified the following day by the murder of her brother's wife and five children by none other than her own beloved brother.She blames Carwin for having influenced her brother to commit murder, but we later learn that dementia itself is almost surely to blame for her brother's wrongs.Before the tale ends, she faces a confrontation with both Carwin and her murderous brother, an experience which she is fortunate to survive.

The tale itself is wonderful.The suspense Brown draws out and continually heightens is first-rate.Clara's encounters with voices and human spirits hidden in the darkness of her bedroom are spine-tingling.The language of the novel does make it a work that requires some concentration on the part of the reader and may serve to frustrate some, but I think it greatly magnifies the horrific aspects of the tale.The dialogues of the actors are admittedly overdramatic and drawn out.No one speaks in this book; rather, everyone makes speeches.The protagonist often resorts to long laments of her great woe and asks how she can possibly go on with the story.Despite such dramatics on her part, though, Clara is clearly a brave, independent woman (reflecting Brown's strong and admirable commitment to the rights of women).Overall, the tale delivers a buffet of the passive voice style of writing, which I for one refuse not to love; even the most unimportant sentences are graced with a flowery, beautiful aspect.

In terms of the Gothic element to the story, one cannot say that the supernatural aspects are wholly disproved in the end--to some extent they are, but not to such an extent that Wieland's murderous actions can be explained by them.Clearly, Wieland did hear voices other than those made by Carwin the biloquist.The air of mystery that remains about Wieland's dementia and the causes of it makes the ending more successful than I feared it would be once I learned of the power of ventriloquism exercised by Carwin to dictate many of the related events.My only complaint is with the final chapter, which is basically an epilogue in the protagonist's journal.Inexplicably, it introduces a new character to explain something about a minor character whom I frankly could not even remember.

The first solid American novel
Charles Brockden Brown has been almost completely forgotten today.Unlikethe more famous James Fenimore Cooper, who is often accorded the title ofthe first American novelist that Brown should bear, Brown's reputation islargely borne up by those few literary critics who love the earliest rootsof American fiction."Wieland" is Brown's best novel, and stillquite readable today as a Gothic novel (although the secret of the villainseems rather mundane today, as the 'power' he exhibits has been playedlargely for laughs since the days of vaudeville and radio).Brown was bornin Philadelphia in 1771, trained in the law, was one of the first to tryand make a living as a writer in the early years of the American republic,and died young in 1810.If you like Gothic novels, or you have a passionfor early American literature, you will enjoy "Wieland."Myself,I prefer him to Cooper, who has been forever rendered laughable in my mindby Mark Twain's hilarious essays on Cooper's literary sins.

A curious read
This book has a very original plot line.The influence of the bazzar, mystical death of the father of this family set off much questioning and fear when similar occurances happen decades later.You will be desperatlytrying to piece together what is going on as this family is ripped apart. The true cause of these events is far to bazzar to be guessed.Thisessencial Gothic classic can be a bit slow to read at parts, but theconclusion is well worth hanging on for. ... Read more

Book Description
Called a “remarkable story” by John Greenleaf Whittier and described by John Keats as “very powerful,” Wieland, Charles Brockden Brown’s disturbing 1798 tale of terror, is a masterpiece involving spontaneous combustion, disembodied voices, religious mania, and a gruesome murder based on a real-life incident.

This Modern Library Paperback Classic includes Wieland’s fragmentary sequel, Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, as well as several other important but hard-to-find Brockden Brown short stories, including “Thessalonica,” “Walstein’s School of History,” and “Death of Cicero.” This collection also reproduces the newspaper account of the murder that inspired Wieland. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

An Interesting Beginning
I'm a collector of early American religious fiction, (my oldest book is from 1826) and a friend recommended "Wieland" to me as one of the earliest American novels. I found it interesting, both as an example of the early Gothic genre and as a sort of Americana.

The phrase "sort of Americana" indicates one of my issues with the book.While the protagonists are American in the sense that they are born here and the action mostly takes place here, their outlook is essentially European.None of them need to work for a living, and their life of leisure is that of European aristocrats, beautifying their estates with mock-Greek temples and pursuing European patents of nobility when older family lines are reputed to fail.Some people are merchants and others are landowners, but no one is a mere farmer or a laborer or even a doctor or lawyer.

In addition, the writing style is labored, copying the European style of works such as "The Castle of Udolfo".No word of one syllable is used when a synonym with two is available, and the more elaborate the language, the more emotional the scene.Even a reader such as myself, who enjoys orotund phraseology, finds it very heavy going.

What makes the book worth reading is the story.Based on a true incident, "Wieland" tries to understand both the external circumstances and the interior mental state of a man who commits terrible crimes for reasons of religious conviction.To accomplish this, Brown posits both an external trigger (a ventriloquist who convinces the main character that he's hearing a divine being) and a hereditary tendency, but still, the crimes and their basis seem to be, sadly, peculiarly American--based on the idea that an individual's impression of God's Will has to be more correct than law, tradition, or even the express words of the Bible.We're still getting in trouble in the same way--and sometimes to the same terrible effect.

Intellectual Gothic
These days, one rarely hears of Charles Brockden Brown unless one happens to be a literature professor/student. Brown has somehow managed to disappear from the radar, but I smell a revival in the future.
I absolutely loved this book. Not only is Wieland the first American gothic novel (1798), but it combines elements from the seduction novels that were also popular at that time. And more importantly, this work speaks to the precariousness of America as a nation at the time of writing. The book is loaded with metaphors, right down to the names of the characters.
Throughout the novel, battle lines are being drawn between religious belief and the hard science of the Enlightenment. The author, in many ways, shows us the many gradations between light and dark--but most of all--draws a very interesting parallel between Clara and Carwin, the only two narrators. "Wieland" proper is directly followed by another piece called "Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist"...you must read these two pieces in conjunction in order to realize the full gravity of Brown's genius. If you are willing to commit to a close reading, you will quickly find that things are not always what they seem. You will also likely begin to realize a bizarre parallel between the two narrators, which you may find deliciously surprising if you are anything like me.
The book was actually fashioned after a true story about a man who killed his wife and children in "the name of God." If that doesn't interest you, I don't know what does! If this book tells us anything, it is that we must rely on all of our senses, not just one, if we want to survive. In this work, characters rely heavily on hearing alone...and many pay severely for it.
The Modern Library edition is a bit expensive but it is a terrific copy and includes the actual newspaper article describing the crime---not all of the publications of Wieland do this.
The only other thing I want to mention is that there are some genuinely creepy things going on in this book, and the beauty of it is, none of it is supernatural. The psychology of man is a very complex thing, indeed, and this novel proves it.
Very satisfying and highly recommended.

the best edition of Wieland

This Modern Library edition is the finest available paperback edition of Wieland.The cover art is compelling, the margins are wide enough to notate, the paper is of decent quality, the text is authoritative, Caleb Crain's introduction is even better than Norman Grabo's introduction for Penguin, and, as if that were not enough, we finally get a couple of Brown's oustanding short stories--not the lame, too-often anthologized Somnambulism, but Thessalonica, an astonishing, apocalyptic tale of civil strife, together with several other pieces worthy of note.As an appendix, we get the viscerally appalling, absolutely hair-raising, newspaper story which Brown fictionalized as Wieland (one wonders whether King and Kubrick read it too for snowy axe chase in the Shining).
... Read more

Book Description

In 1798, a decade after the Founding Fathers created a nation based on the principles of liberty and equality, Charles Brockden Brown, then an unknown Philadelphia writer, invented the American Gothic novel. His first book, Wieland, is the story of a religious fanatic haunted by demonic voices instructing him to murder his wife and children; in subsequent works, a young country bumpkin confronts the depravities of city existence, an impecunious daughter becomes the erotic obsession of an insane egomaniacal rationalist, and a sleepwalker awakes to--and participates in--the extremes of frontier savagery. How could a glorious age of American history also give rise to the darkest of literary traditions, one that would inspire Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, and many other best-selling American writers?

In Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic, Peter Kafer carefully unravels the mystery of what compelled this pious Philadelphia Quaker to become fascinated with a peculiar form of dark European imagery and transform it into something wholly American. In the new nation, Kafer notes, there were no ancient monasteries, no haunted castles, no hierarchies of nobility to draw upon. Taking inspiration instead from his pacifist family's persecution at the hands of the American Revolutionaries, including the likes of Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, as well as from perverse expressions of European-American Protestantism and the suppressed histories of his native Pennsylvania, Brockden Brown wrote of the horrors that lurked below the triumphant veneer of the young American republic. In doing so, he became the literary conscience of his generation.

Written with a witty and acutely critical eye, Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic illuminates the social and political influences on the nation's first professional novelist and reveals the surprising origins of one of American literature's most popular and enduring genres.

Book Description
Illuminates this important but often neglected author, using gender and sexuality theories, as well as drawing upon his nonfiction output, to reenergize Brown's work. ... Read more

Book Description
From 1803 to 1807, Charles Brockden Brown served as editor and chief contributor to the Literary Magazine, and American Register, a popular Philadelphia miscellany. His position allowed him to observe and comment upon life in the United States and transatlantic world during the nineteenth century's first decade.

This book considers how Brown's Literary Magazine contributed to the development of cultural cohesiveness and political stability in the young United States. It explores the intellectual and cultural setting in which this Philadelphia miscellany was published, the political writing that appears in what Brown claimed was a politically neutral venue, and the social and cultural criticism that attempts to guide the development of the American character. During his twenty years as an author, he participated in disseminating texts of cultural and literary worth. Brown's essays and reviews assisted in the establishment of reading habits in America and influenced the public reception of the early American press. ... Read more

Book Description

Among the leading writers of the early republic, Charles Brockden Brown often appears as a romantic prototype--the brilliant, alienated author rejected by a utilitarian, materialistic American society. In The Romance of Real Life Steven Watts reinterprets Brown's life and work as a complex case study in the emerging culture of capitalism at the dawn of the nineteenth century.

Offering a revisionist view of Brown himself, Watts examines the major novels of the 1790s as well as previously neglected sources--from early essays and private letters to late-career forays into journalism, political pamphleteering, serial fiction, and cultural criticism.

Book Description
This book explores images of single and married men in C.B. Brown's Monthly Magazine and concludes that Brown used his periodical as a vehicle for validating bachelorhood as a viable alternative form of masculinity. ... Read more

Book Description
One of the earliest major American novels, Wieland (1798) is a thrilling tale of suspense and intrigue set in rural Pennsylvania in the 1760s. Based on an actual case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the novel employs Gothic devices and sensational elements such as spontaneous
combustion, ventriloquism, and religious fanaticism.Also included is Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, the unfinished sequal to Wieland, in which Brown considers power and manipulation while tracing Carwin's career as a disciple of the utopist Ludloe. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

the early beginnings of american literature
Having to rate a book like this is no easy task. I give it four stars as a sort of average. The edition itself, with a solid introduction by Emory Eliot, is very good. The novel, like all of Brown's works, is a somewhat unsatisfying effort.

That said, let me add quickly that this novel is a must-read, without a doubt. This truly Gothic tale will keep you in suspence from start to finish--and guess what, Brown even claims a historical precedent for the narrator's brother slaughtering his wife and children. This is Real TV!

It is not a great novel (although superior to, for instance, "Edgar Huntly" and "Stephen Calvert") but it is a fascinating one. Brown was quick to jump on the bandwagon of female fiction that proved to be the bestseller in 19th century America, and this semi-epistolary tale by a female narrator is fascinating if only for the problems its form poses. For instance, its epistolary character, meant to create a sense of urgency and directness, never convinces due to its pretentious literate (read, latinate) diction and syntax. Moreover, Brown's choice of a female narrator--a man writing like a woman writing like a man--, while marketable in 1798, shows that he always bites off much more than he can chew. A much better (and earlier, 1797!) example of a female epistolary novel is Hannah W. Foster's "The Coquette," available in a wonderful edition also by the Oxford UP.

Unlike what some would have you believe, Brown is not the earliest American novelist. It is interesting to note that some of his fans claim Brown instead of Cooper, completely forgetting the books put out by female authors and read mainly by women. I might add that Brown had a male predecessor also, a namesake, William Hill Brown ("The Power of Sympathy," 1789): one shouldn't try to simplify the history of early American literature. However, to come to grips with American literature, and especially its love for the Gothic (mystery, murder, incest), "Wieland" is a great start, and this is a very good edition. ... Read more