Franklin looked steadily at this world, Woolman at the
next. Each record is supplementary to the other.
EARLY AMERICAN FICTION
THE FIRST ATTEMPTS.--MRS. SARAH MORTON published in Boston in 1789 a novel
entitled _The Power of Sympathy_. This is probably the first American novel
to appear in print. The reason for such a late appearance of native fiction
may be ascribed to the religious character of the early colonists and to
the ascendency of the clergy, who would not have tolerated novel reading by
members of their flocks. Jonathan Edwards complained that some of his
congregation were reading forbidden books, and he gave from the pulpit the
names of the guilty parties. These books were probably English novels. Sir
Leslie Stephen thinks that Richardson's _Pamela_ (1740) may have been one
of the books under the ban. There is little doubt that a Puritan church
member would have been disciplined if he had been known to be a reader of
some of Fielding's works, like _Joseph Andrews_ (1742). The Puritan clergy,
even at a later period, would not sanction the reading of novels unless
they were of the dry, vapid type, like the earliest Sunday school books.
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