Charles Brockden Brown, Arthur Mervyn

Michael Drexler (Bucknell University); Lena Perminova (Bucknell University)

Ed. by Scott Slawinski, Western Michigan University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.2: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth Century, 1783-1900.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1799

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Arthur Mervyn, or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 is a novel by Charles Brockden Brown and one of his best and most popular works. Written in two parts—the first in 1798 and the second in 1800—the novel offers a vivid and dynamic picture of life in 1790s Philadelphia. Arthur Mervyn is set amid the time of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 and engages the great psychological trauma caused by the disaster. And yet with the entirety of Part Two set after the fever has subsided, it also surveys the capital city’s fast-developing commercial economy and the greater social mobility it afforded; the substantial population growth as immigrants fled revolutions in Haiti and France; and the lives of free Blacks who had fled …

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1738 words

Citation: Drexler, Michael, Lena Perminova. "Arthur Mervyn". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 September 2014 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6521, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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