These
were all published within the space of three years from 1798, the date of
the publication of _Wieland_. These romances show a striking change from
the American fiction which had preceded them. They are no longer didactic
and sentimental, but Gothic or romantic. Working under English influence,
Brown gave to America her first great Gothic romances. The English romance
which influenced him the most was _Caleb Williams_ (1794), the work of
William Godwin (1756-1836), the father-in-law of the poet Shelley.
_Wieland_ is considered the strongest of Brown's Gothic romances, but it
does not use as distinctively American materials as his three other stories
of this type, _Ormond_, _Arthur Mervyn_, or _Memoirs of the Year 1793_, and
_Edgar Huntly_. The results of his own experience with the yellow fever
plague in Philadelphia give an American touch to _Ormond_ and _Arthur
Mervyn_, and at the same time add the Gothic element of weirdness and
horror. _Arthur Mervyn_ is far the better of the two.
_Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleep Walker_, shows a Gothic characteristic
in its very title. This book is noteworthy in the evolution of American
fiction, not because of the strange actions of the sleep walker, but for
the reason that Brown here deliberately determines, as he states in his
prefatory note _To the Public_ to give the romance an American flavor, by
using "the incidents of Indian hostility and the perils of the Western
wilderness.
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