1. For fuller discussions of the development of the Gothic in America, see Birkhead, Edith, The Tale of Terror: A Study of the Gothic Romance (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1921), especially pp. 139–42, 188–200Google Scholar; Coad, Oral S., “The Gothic Element in American Literature Before 1835,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 24 (1925), 72–93Google Scholar; Quinn, Arthur Hobson, “Some Phases of the Supernatural in American Literature,” PMLA, 25 (1910), 114–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Railo, Eino, The Haunted Castle: A Study of the Elements of English Romanticism (London: George Routledge, 1927), pp. 300–325Google Scholar; Redden, Sister Mary Mauritia, The Gothic Fiction in American Magazines (1765–1800) (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1939)Google Scholar; and Ringe, Donald A., “Early American Gothic: Brown, Dana, and Allston,” American Transcendental Quarterly, 19 (1973), 3–8.Google Scholar See also Benton, Richard P., ed., “The Gothic Tradition in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: A Symposium in Two Parts,” Emerson Society Quarterly, 18 (1972).Google Scholar Particularly pertinent are three essays in this collection: Benton, , “The Problems of Literary Gothicism,” pp. 5–9Google Scholar; Hume, Robert D., “Charles Brockden Brown and the Uses of Gothicism: A Reassessment,” pp. 10–18Google Scholar; and Levy, Maurice, “Poe and the Gothic Tradition,” pp. 19–29.Google Scholar

2. For a thorough assessment of the different British influences on early American fiction, see Brown, Herbert Ross, The Sentimental Novel in America, 1789–1860 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1940)Google Scholar; DemingLoshe, Lillie, The Early American Novel, 1789–1830 (1907; rpt. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966)Google Scholar; Fiedler, Leslie A., Love and Death in the American Novel (New York: Criterion Books, 1960)Google Scholar, especially Chaps. 1–7; Martin, Terence, The Instructed Vision: Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and the Origins of American Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; and Spengemann, William C., The Adventurous Muse: The Poetics of American Fiction, 1789–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), especially Chaps. 1–3.Google Scholar

3. The quotation is from Atwood, Margaret's Lady Oracle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), p. 34Google Scholar, a novel that explores the psychology of reading and writing escape literature such as “Costume Gothic” romances and that both copies and brilliantly parodies the gothic form.

4. At least two commentators on the Gothic have insisted that castles are a necessary ingredient of the form. See Summers, Montague, The Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel (1938; rpt. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), pp. 190–93Google Scholar, and Tompkins, J. M. S., The Popular Novel in England, 1770–1800 (1932; rpt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), p. 226.Google Scholar

5. For theoretical discussions of the psychology of the Gothic, see Garber, Frederick, “Meaning and Mode in Gothic Fiction,” in Paliaro, Harold E., ed., Racism in the Eighteenth Century (Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1973), pp. 155–69Google Scholar; Hume, Robert D., “Gothic Versus Romantic: A Revaluation of the Gothic Novel,” PMLA, 84 (1969), 282–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelson, Lowry Jr., “Night Thoughts on the Gothic Novel,” Yale Review, n.s. 52 (1962), 236–57Google Scholar; and for a particularly persuasive discussion of the way American Gothic writers explore the perceptual process, Ringe, Donald A., “Early American Gothic.”Google Scholar

6. The formula I am suggesting for sentimental fiction does not, of course, apply to all examples of the form. Just as the best of the Gothic novels transcended the formulas, so too do some of the best examples of the sentimental, such as Hannah Webster Foster's surprisingly subtle The Coquette; or, The History of Eliza Wharton (Boston, 1797)Google Scholar, a novel in which the “good” male character turns out to be as selfish and shallow as his seducer counterpart. That dichotomy undone makes Eliza's choice far more complicated than was generally the case in early American sentimental novels.

7. A good example of the Wertherian man of feeling is Harrington in the first American novel, Brown, William Hill's The Power of Sympathy; or, The Triumph of Nature (1789), ed. Kable, William S. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969).Google Scholar When Harrington commits suicide, his body is found slumped over a copy of “The Sorrows of Werter” [sic] (p. 175).Google Scholar

8. See, for example, Lundblad, Jane's Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Tradition of the Gothic Romance (New York: Haskell House, 1964)Google Scholar, and Stein, William Bysshe, Hawthorne's Faust: A Study of the Devil Archetype (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1953).Google Scholar For comparable discussions of Melville's gothicism, consult Arvin, Newton, “Melville and the Gothic Novel,” New England Quarterly, 22 (1949), 33–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McAleer, John J., “Poe and the Gothic Elements in Moby Dick,” Emerson Society Quarterly, 27 (1962), 34Google Scholar; and Trimpi, Helen P., “Melville's Use of Demonology and Witchcraft in Moby Dick,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 30 (1969), 543–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Different formulations of the “problem” can be found in Smith, Henry Nash, Virgin Land (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Nye, Russel B., The Unembarrassed Muse (New York: Dial Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978)Google Scholar; and Smith, Henry Nash, Democracy and the Novel: Popular Resistance to Classic American Writers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).Google Scholar

10. Macdonald, Dwight, Masscult and Midcult (New York: Partisan Review Press, 1961).Google Scholar

11. I am here using the theory of formula fiction posited in Cawelti, John G., Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), especially Chaps. 1–2.Google Scholar

12. As Malcolm Cowley notes in the “Introduction” to The Portable Faulkner (New York: Viking Press, 1954)Google Scholar, one of the “principal traditions in American letters” found in Faulkner is the “tradition of psychological horror, often close to symbolism, that begins with Charles Brockden Brown … and extends through Poe, Melville, Henry James (in his later stories), Stephen Crane, and Hemingway” (p. 22).Google Scholar See also Putzel, Max, “What Is Gothic about Absalom, Absalom!?” Southern Literary Journal, 4 (1970), 3–14Google Scholar, and Stone, Edward, “Usher, Poquelin, and Miss Emily: The Progress of Southern Gothic,” Georgia Review, 14 (1960), 433–43.Google Scholar

13. See Martin, , The Instructed Vision, Chap. 3.Google Scholar

14. Orians, G. Harrison, “Censure of Fiction in American Romances and Magazines, 1789–1810,” PMLA, 52 (1937), 195–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Palmer, Ormond E., “Some Attitudes Toward Fiction in America to 1870, and a Bit Beyond,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1952Google Scholar, Chap. 3; and Charvat, William, The Origins of American Critical Thought, 1819–1835 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1936)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially Chaps. 2 and 7, all discuss prevailing attitudes toward early fiction.

15. “Dedication” to the original edition of 1789, The Power of Sympathy (reprinted in the Kable edition, n.p.).

16. Fidelity Rewarded (Boston, 1796), p. 4Google Scholar; and Amelia; or, The Faithless Briton (Boston, 1798), p. 2.Google Scholar

17. Cook, Don L., ed., The Algerine Captive (New Haven: College & University Press, 1970), pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

18. New York Mirror, 01 31, 1835, p. 241.Google Scholar Harrison T. Meserole discusses this story (and other early works) in “Some Notes on Early American Fiction: Kelroy Was There,” Studies in American Fiction, 5 (1977), 1–12.Google Scholar The Gothic is also parodied by Paulding, James K. in Koningsmarke, the Long Finne (1823)Google Scholar and by Irving, Washington in Tales of a Traveller (1824).Google Scholar

19. Cook, , The Algerine Captive, p. 28.Google Scholar

20. Brown condemns foreign writers of Gothics in two of his prefaces: see “To the Editor” accompanying the extract of “Sky Walk; Or the Man Unknown to Himself,” published in the Weekly Magazine, 03 24, 1798, pp. 228–31Google Scholar, and his address “To the Public” at the beginning of Edgar Huntly (1799; rpt. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1963), p. 4.Google Scholar In the “Preface” to Edgar Huntly, Brown particularly criticizes the “castles and chimeras” as well as the “puerile superstitions and exploded manners” of the European gothic novels.

21. Witherington, Paul, “Brockden Brown's Other Novels: Clara Howard and Jane Talbot,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 29 (1974), 259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Witherington, 's essay “Benevolence and the ‘Utmost Stretch’: Charles Brockden Brown's Narrative Dilemma,” Criticism, 14 (1972), 175–91.Google Scholar

22. The publishing history of this novel is quite complex. Isaac Mitchell originally wrote and published it in weekly installments for the Poughkeepsie Political Barometer (06 5 to October 5, 1804)Google Scholar under the title “Alonzo and Melissa.” In 1811, two versions of the novel appeared in book form, each bearing a different title and the name of a different author. Mitchell, Isaac's The Asylum; or, Alonzo and Melissa. An American Tale (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Joseph Nelson, 1811)Google Scholar reprints in two volumes the story published in the Political Barometer, including a ten-page introduction, a fifteen-page preface, and the long first volume, which tells of the Berghers' plight in Europe. Daniel Jackson, Jr., published under his own name A Short Account of the Courtship of ALONZO & MELISSA: Setting Forth Their Hardships and Difficulties, Caused by the Barbarity of an Unfeeling Father (Plattsburgh, N.Y.: “Printed for the Proprietor,” 1811).Google Scholar Jackson pirated only the first page of the preface, none of Volume I, and the whole of Volume II. For this essay I have used the 1811 Mitchell edition of both volumes, and all parenthetical references in the text are to this edition. This version, now accepted as the “standard,” is available on microfilm (ACS Reel 226.7). For more information on the controversy surrounding the authorship and curious publishing history of The Asylum, see the New York Times Saturday “Review of Books” for 06 4, 1904Google Scholar; June 11, 1904; September 3, 1904; September 17, 1904; January 21, 1905; January 28, 1905; and March 4, 1905. See also Hamilton, Milton W., The Country Printer 1785–1830 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936).Google Scholar

23. The Asylum continued to be a best-seller through much of the nineteenth century, but ironically, it was popular in the abbreviated form plagiarized by Daniel Jackson, Jr. As late as 1832 an edition bearing Jackson's name appeared in America under the title Alonzo and Melissa: or the Unfeeling Father. An American Tale (Sandbornton [sic], N.H.: D. V. Moulton, 1832).Google Scholar This popular 1832 edition was published in “pocket” size (10.9 mm × 6.2 mm), reprinted only one page of the preface and only Volume II of the original novel, but also appended to the novel the story of “Henry and Julia, A Tale of Real Life” by N. H. Wright—another sentimental tale, this one also set during the Revolutionary War. At the end of the century the work was still popular. Loshe, Lillie D., writing in 1907Google Scholar, notes that, although The Asylum is weaker than MrsRadcliffe, 's books, “it has gone through many editions, and is probably known to-day to many who have never read The Mysteries of Udolpho” (pp. 56–57).Google Scholar

24. It should be noted that the terms “sentimental,” “sentimentality,” “sensitivity,” “sensibility,” and “sensible” are used interchangeably in early American fiction.

25. Mitchell gives us one of the finest fictional accounts of Benjamin Franklin short of Melville's portrait in Israel Potter. When Alonzo is alone and destitute in France, Franklin comes to his rescue. But Franklin insists that Alonzo remember cause, country, and parents—but forget Melissa who, most surely, is dead. Of course, she is not. And Alonzo is finally rewarded with “happiness ever after” precisely because he disobeys Franklin's pragmatic advice and continues to seek Melissa.

26. Cowie, Alexander, in The Rise of the American Novel (New York: American Book, 1948)Google Scholar, derides Mitchell's use of “papier mâché scenery” and “bogus gothic effects” (pp. 107–8).Google Scholar

27. In a number of early American novels the forming and preserving of a new nation parallels the marriage of the hero and heroine. Most notable examples are The Algerine Captive, in which Tyler four times in his final paragraph uses “to unite” to describe both the situation of the nation and Updike Underbill's plans to “unite himself” in marriage with a virtuous wife. Similarly, Holman, Jessee Lynch's The Prisoners of Niagara, or Errors of Education (1810)Google Scholar ends with the marriage of hero and heroine and the concurrent signing of the Declaration of Independence. And in Woodworth, Samuel's The Champions of Freedom, or the Mysterious Chief (1816)Google Scholar, George Washington Willoughby and Catherine Fleming are reunited and finally marry only after the War of 1812 draws to a close and order is restored to the republic.

28. This is a common feature of early American fiction, particularly of the American sentimental novels written before 1815. As I have argued at length elsewhere, the novels are as much political fables as social ones. See “Mothers and Daughters in the Fiction of the New Republic,” in Davidson, Cathy N. and Broner, E. M., eds., The Lost Tradition: Mothers and Daughters in Literature (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980), Chap. 10.Google Scholar

29. Consult Ringe, Donald A., “The American Revolution in American Romance,” American Literature, 49 (1977), 352–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. See Petter, Henri, The Early American Novel (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, Chap. 14, and Douglas, , Feminization of American CultureGoogle Scholar, especially Chap. 6. But it should here be emphasized that many sentimental novels also broke out of expected formulas or, rather, worked covertly around and through them, often to examine important questions about the lives of late-eighteenth-and nineteenth-century women. See Papashvily, Helen Waite, All the Happy Endings (New York: Harper & Bros., 1956)Google Scholar, and Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, especially the discussion of Northanger Abbey, pp. 128–50.Google Scholar