Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist

Charles Brockden Brown was an American novelist, historian, and editor, who has been recognized as one of the first American novelists and an early proponent of the Gothic romance genre. Brown’s works are a combination of his own Romantic imagination and Enlightenment ideals, and are often characterized by elements of the sensational and violent. His work also reflects an interest in the early feminist movement, and frequently draws on Enlightenment-era medical writings by authors like Erasmus Darwin. “Wieland”, Brown’s most highly regarded novel, is deemed to be the first gothic novel by an American. This epistolary and highly psychological novel details the horrible events that befall siblings Clara and Theodore Wieland and their family. “Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist” was published in fragments in Brown’s Literary Magazine later, and tells the story of Carwin prior to his involvement in “Wieland”. This unfinished story clarifies some of the uncertainty surrounding Carwin’s character in “Wieland”. These two works, Brown’s most important, are collected together here in this volume.