The New Student's Reference Work/Brown, Charles Brockden

Brown, Charles Brockden, an early American novelist, much prized in his day, was born at Philadelphia in 1771, and died there in 1810. His two best-known stories are Wieland or the Transformation and Arthur Mervyn. The former is an alluring though improbable tale, of a ventriloquist, who, by personating a supernatural being, leads the hero to kill his wife and children; the latter gives a vivid description of Philadelphia, when, in 1783, the city was scourged by yellow fever. His other stories, Ormond, Edgar Huntley, Jane Talbot and Philip Stanley are now but little read. Early in the century he brought out semi-annually for a time The American Register, a useful work of literary and historic reference.