Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Sealsfield, Charles

SEALSFIELD, Charles, author, b. in Poppitz, Moravia, Austria, 3 March, 1793; d. in Solothurn, Switzerland, 26 May, 1864. His real name was Karl Postel. He became a member of a religious order in his youth, but escaped from the convent at Prague in 1822, soon afterward came to this country, where he assumed the name of Sealsfield, and for a short time was connected with the “Courrier des États-Unis” in New York city. He went back to Europe about 1828 as correspondent in Paris of the “Courier and Enquirer,” and in 1832 settled in Solothurn, but returned to the United States, and passed several years in Louisiana and subsequently in Mexico and Central America. His principal works are “Tokeah, or the White Rose” (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1828; German ed., under the title of “Der Legitime und die Republikaner,” 3 vols., Zurich, 1833); “Transatlantische Reiseskizzen” (2 vols., 1833); “Der Virey und die Aristokraten,” a Mexican novel (2 vols., 1834); “Lebensbilder aus beiden Hemisphären” (2 vols., 1834; 2d ed., entitled “Morton, oder die grosse Tour,” 1846); “Deutsch-americanische Wahlverwandschaften” (5 vols., 1838-'42); and “Süden und Norden” (3 vols., 1842-'3). His works have been translated into English, and several of them into French. Two complete editions have been published in German (15 vols., Stuttgart, 1845-7; 18 vols., 1846). See “Erinnerungen an Sealsfield” (Brussels, 1864).