Edgar Huntly or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker
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Edgar Huntly or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker
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Summary
The story of a young man who sleepwalks each night and is a threat to himself and others, unable to control his baser passions. Set outside Philadelphia in 1787, the book is a metaphor for the founding of a new nation, but can be read on a literal level as an American "Gothic" novel.
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Edgar Huntly or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown
One of the first American Gothic novels, Edgar Huntly (1787) mirrors the social and political temperaments of the postrevolutionary United States. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) was born to a merchant Quaker family in Philadelphia, and was educated at Robert Proud’s school. In his early twenties he committed himself to literature and avidly read the latest models from England and Europe—especially Rousseau, Bage, Godwin, Southey, and Coleridge. By 1795 Brown was earnestly devoted to fiction; once engaged, he composed at a breakneck pace, publishing between 1797 and 1802 seven romances, a long pro-feminist dialogue, and numerous sketches and tales. Four of those romances earned him the perhaps dubious title of "father of the American novel"—Wieland (1798), Ormond (1799), Arthur Mervyn (Part 1, 1799; Part II, 1800), and between those two parts, Edgar Huntly (1799). All four are remarkably sophisticated moral, psychological, and political allegories that burned into the artistic consciousness of Poe, Hawthorne, Fenimore Cooper, and Melville. By the 1820s, a decade after his death, Brown was ranked with Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper as the embodiment of American literary genius, the first American writer to successfully bridge the gulf between entertainment and art in fiction.
Norman S. Grabo introduced and helped edit the authoritative edition of Arthur Mervyn, and is the author of The Coincidental Art of Charles Brockden Brown and the first book-length study of America’s premier colonial poet, Edward Taylor. He writes widely on early American aesthetics, and is at present Chapman Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Tulsa.
Norman S. Grabo introduced and helped edit the authoritative edition of Arthur Mervyn, and is the author of The Coincidental Art of Charles Brockden Brown and the first book-length study of America’s premier colonial poet, Edward Taylor. He writes widely on early American aesthetics, and is at present Chapman Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Tulsa.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780140390629 |
| ISBN 10 | 0140390626 |
| Title | Edgar Huntly or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker |
| Author | Charles Brockden Brown |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1988-01-05 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |