Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Charles Brockden Brown and Mike Lee Davis

Murder, divine mandates, even spontaneous human combustion set the scene in a thrilling tale in one of America’s first novels.  Clara Wieland lives in virtual isolation in a small farming community in Pennsylvania.  Her quiet life turns horrific when she learns she must defend herself against the deadly intentions of her own brother, who believes God has instructed him to sacrifice his family.  Clara investigates utilizing distinctive Enlightenment scrutiny.  Are the voices her brother hears authentic, or the trickery of a visiting stranger with a penchant for ventriloquism?  By transplanting the English gothic novel to America and critiquing that literary form in its new setting, Charles Brockden Brown manages to create a text that is simultaneously a bizarre thriller, a novel of ideas, and a declaration of literary independence for the emerging American nation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411430860

Charles Brockden Brown

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) was an American novelist and historian. Born to a family of Quakers in Philadelphia, Brown studied as a lawyer before embarking on a literary career. Alongside his work as a successful author of novels, short stories, essays, and poetry, Brown was a well-regarded editor and public intellectual. He was heavily influenced by British radicals of the French Revolutionary period, including Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and became an important figure both in the developing American literary scene and for such writers as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley. His style exhibits a profound understanding of Gothic fiction and radical democratic politics, and his works incorporate elements of sentimental fiction, the captivity narrative, and epistolary form in their composition. Although he was far from the only writer working in early America, his critical acclaim and popular success certainly make him one of the most important. Brown’s brief but productive career earned the admiration of Walter Scott, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, all of whom he inspired and influenced.

Reviews for Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

[arkrayder · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This was terrible. Thought it would never end.

[alexthehunn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a fascinating, though admittedly strange, tale that I read as an undergraduate. It is chock full of atmosphere and suspense, though the plot device that drives the work seems pretty flimsy. If you can get beyond that point, the book is an interesting study in gothic writing from an American author.

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the earliest American novels. Still worth reading. A bizarre pre-Gothic tale including spontaneous combustion, sleep-walking, and muuuurder.

[fleurdiabolique · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The ending of Wieland is a MAJOR cop-out for anyone who is reading the book for fun. If you're reading it to analyze it in relationship to its social context, then the ending (along with the rest of the book) says a lot of interesting things about what ideas were in the air at that time, but as an ending for a seeming horror/supernatural story, it is just stupid, implausible, and not even all that thought-provoking.

[howifeelaboutbooks · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The language of this story, as well as the narrator's (& author's?) need to share every little detail, made this story a slow read. The story is a little skewed since the narrator gives every detail about Latin pronunciations or plays the group puts on, but glosses over the scary parts of who's hiding in her closet. The ending is a deus ex machina, and a major letdown as far as whodunit goes. I guess this can be looked past, since it IS the first American mystery, but it's not worth the read outside of class. If I hadn't been reading it for a class, and therefore discussing every little aspect, I wouldn't have had a clue of what was going on, and would have been even angrier at trooping through the whole book for such a crappy ending

[akblanchard_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Weird story about a tight-knit group of classically-minded friends whose lives change for the worse when they admit a mysterious man into their circle. I agree with the reviewer who wrote that he/she thought it will never end.