The First American Novel

Clarissa Harlowe being abducted by the villain Robert Lovelace

If I had been asked what was the first American novel to be published, I don't know what my answer would be - but it would not have been The Power of Sympathy.

That novel was published in Boston in 1789. The full title of the novel was The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth. The author is William Hill Brown, although he published it anonymously. 

It is an epistolary novel, told entirely through the letters that the characters write to one another. Brown modeled its form after earlier novels such as Pamela by Samuel Richardson.

It tells the rather scandalous for the time story of a young New Englander named Thomas Harrington who has fallen madly in love with a girl named Harriot. Unbeknownst to him, Harriot is his illegitimate half-sister. This forces Thomas' father to have to decide whether to reveal this secret. He knows that if he does not the couple - and he - will suffer eternal damnation for incest.

Spoiler Alert (not that you were planning to read the book but just in case) It does not end well for Harriot or Thomas. But we would expect that for a moral tale from 1789.

The author got inspiration from a Boston scandal of the time around a woman named Fanny Apthorp who was a neighbor. That story involved an affair with her sister’s husband, pregnancy, and Fanny's suicide. Though Brown changed the names and the setting, he still thought it safer to publish anonymously. Many people at the time believed that the author was Sarah Morton, the betrayed wife. Eventually, Brown’s niece confirmed that her uncle had written the novel.

I haven't read Brown's novel but I had to read Pamela in a college course. The description of it shows that it is certainly in the same virtuous vein as Brown's book. Though my professor gushed over poor fifteen-year-old Pamela Andrews, who is "relentlessly pursued by her dead mistress’s son," I found the novel less than engrossing. 

Pamela is a good girls who "holds out against his demands and threats of abduction and rape, determined to defend her virginity and abide by her own moral standards." I suppose the psychological aspects and ideas of sex and power certainly would have caused a sensation when it was first published. 

If you really can't get to sleep at night, stop staring at a screen's blue light and try reading another Richardson novel - Clarissa...

The title alone will make you drowsy: Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life. And Particularly Shewing, the Distresses that May Attend the Misconduct Both of Parents and Children, In Relation to Marriage.  It is another epistolary novel (a form I despise) by Samuel Richardson, published in 1748. 

Poor young Clarissa Harlowe's quest for virtue is continually thwarted by her newly wealthy family. 

The book is considered one of the longest novels in the English language (based on estimated word count) but the nine volumes for 99 cents on Amazon Kindle. are a bargain (based on estimated word count!). 

It is generally regarded as Richardson's "masterpiece." 

No comment from me as I have not read it.

Has anyone read any of these books?
I'd love to read your comments here.