Arthur Mervyn, Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793: First and Second Parts

Charles Brockden Brown

Oca 2002 · Kent State University Press

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Arthur Mervyn has long puzzled students and scholars with its seeming diffuseness, resulting from its original serial publication. Critics agree, however, that the power of this novel lies not so much in its portrait of "right virtue, " which was Brown's primary aim, as in its realistic descriptions of the yellow fever epidemic and the ensuing panic that swept Philadelphia in the summer of 1793. The ambiguities of Arthur Mervyn's character and the precarious nature of the revolutionary 1790s make this novel a particularly apt subject for lively discussion and future scholarship and make this revised edition an excellent classroom text.

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Charles Brockden Brown was born on January 17, 1771 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After he completed his schooling in 1787, he began apprenticing at the law offices of Alexander Wilcocks and pursued literary interests. When he was 18, he published his first literary works: the Rhapsodist sketches, which appeared anonymously in the Columbian Magazine, and a poem entitled An Inscription for General Washington's Tomb Stone, which appeared in the State Gazette of North Carolina. In 1793, he abandoned the law to attempt a life of letters. Within four years, between 1789 and 1801, he published six novels: Wieland, Ormand, Arthur Mervyn, Edgar Huntly, Clara Howard and Jane Talbot. He died of tuberculosis on February 22, 1810.