Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic illuminates the social and political influences on the nation's first professional novelist and reveals the surprising origins of one of American literature's most popular and enduring genres.

Charles Brockden Brown's Revolution and the Birth of American Gothic

Peter Kafer

2004 | 272 pages | Cloth $55.00
American History | Biography | Literature
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Table of Contents

Introduction

Prologue: Philadelphia, Summer 1777-Summer 1778: "the Horrors of the night"

PART I: FACTS AND FICTIONS, 1650-1798
Chapter 1: Children of the Light, 1650s-1777
Chapter 2: From Terror to Terror to Terror, 1777-1793
Chapter 3: Revolutionary Reverberations, 1793-1798

Interlude: Philadelphia, 1795-1799: "renderings in the bowels of nations"

PART II: FICTIONS AND FACTS, 1798-1800
Chapter 4: Sins of Fathers
Chapter 5: The Anti-Godwin
Chapter 6: The Return of the Present and Past

PART III: A LIE, 1800-1804
Conclusion: Charles Brown, American
Epilogue: Brockden Brown and the American Gothic Tradition

Notes
Index
Acknowledgments