r the Memoirs of a
Sleep-Walker" (1801), "Clara Howard" and "Jane Talbot" (1801). All these
romances dealt with sombre and mysterious or terrible subjects.
"Wieland" was a story of monstrous crime occasioned through the agency
of ventriloquism. "Arthur Mervyn" contained vivid descriptions of the
yellow fever pestilence in Philadelphia in 1793. "Edgar Huntley"
followed the fortunes of a somnambulist in the mountain fastnesses of
Western Pennsylvania.

When Brown began to write "the churchyard romance" was in fashion, and
novelists revelled in tales of horror and of terror, dwelling long and
painfully upon the most loathsome details of some ghastly bit of fancy.
It was the time of Lewis's "Tales of Terror," of Walpole's "Castle of
Otranto," of Beckford's "Vathek," and of Mrs. Radcliffe's "Mysteries of
Udolpho" and Mrs. Shelley's "Frankenstein." William Godwin, too, wrote
ghostly stories of crime and supernatural agencies, and from Godwin,
Charles Brockden Brown caught his style. The influence of Godwin is
noticeable in Brown's first work, "Alcuin, a Dialogue on the Rights of
Women" (1797). Godwin's "Falkland" and "Caleb Williams" are the models
of "Wieland" and "Ormond."

It is interesting to find young Percy Bysshe Shelley confessing his
obligations to the Philadelphia novelist, and saying that Brown's novels
had influenced him beyond any other books. Traces of "Wieland" are to be
found deeply stamped upon "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne." It is a singular
chapter of literary history that records the progress of William
Godwin's social theories and tales of horror across the Atlantic to an
obscure house in Philadelphia and their return in a new literary form
into the hands of William Godwin's son-in-law, Percy Bysshe Shelley,
himself a poet of American descent.

The British magazines of 1804 contain flattering notices of Brown, and
his novels were reprinted and read with interest and critical approval
in England. At home he has fallen into undeserved oblivion, and the
attempts in 1857 and 1887 to revive the interest in his works proved
fruitless. His style had in it no elements of permanent life, but he was
the first to discover the capabilities of romance in America, and used
in all his books American characters and scenery.

Sir Walter Scott so greatly admired the works of the American novelist
that he named the hero of Guy Mannering after him and gave to another of
the characters of the same story the familiar name of