Word: brockden
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...Richardson's Clarissa and the gothic novel of crumbling castles and mental phantoms invented by Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto). Eventually housewives and what Hawthorne called "female scribblers" took over the sentimental novel; as a romantic fantasy it has paced U.S. bestseller lists ever since. When Charles Brockden Brown, a graceless but serious 18th century writer, replaced Italian ruins with the American wilderness and aristocratic doom with Indian gore-in such novels as Edgar Huntly-the gothic novel became the favored mode of major U.S. novelists from Melville to Faulkner...
Critics say that U. S. fiction began with the gothic romances of Charles Brockden Brown. They mean that it began with weird plots, wild scenes, frenzied speeches, mysterious encounters between mysterious characters. By next month Brown will have been dead 128 years, but U. S. fiction still has a gothic tradition that realists have never been able to conquer, running from Poe right down to the operatic extravagances of Thomas Wolfe. Last week its persistence was demonstrated by a long first novel that had all the ingredients of a gothic romance except a ghost, and which seemed all the more...
...Early American Novel, Charles Brockden Brown," Professor Murdock, Harvard...
...Charles Brockden Brown". Professor Muroock, Harvard 2, English...
...carefully prepared that it might well serve as a short history of the great orator. Herbert Tuttle gives us an account of the Emperor William. The student of fine arts will be interested in reading "Mr. Ruskin's Early Years." An article of real value is that on "Charles Brockden Brown," the first American novelist. The name is so seldom heard at present that the pioneer of American fiction is almost forgotten. The "Contributors' Club" and "Books of the Month" close the number...