Edgar Huntly or The Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown - first published 1799 (1831).pdf

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E D G A R H U N T L Y;
OR,
THE SLEEP WALKER.
BY CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN.
LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET :
BELL AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH;
CUMMING, DUBLIN; AND
GALIGNANI, PARIS.
1831.
INTRODUCTION.
LIFE AND WRITINGS OF BROWN.
CHARLEs BRocKDEN BRowN was one of the earliest
American novelists, and is inferior to none of his
countrymen who have succeeded him in the paths of
romance, either in originality, power, or the faculty of
conferring, during the perusal of his fictions, a deep
and sustained interest. Indeed, it might truly be said,
that in originality he has not been surpassed by any
inventor of story of whatever age or country; for,
though his style in composition is modelled on the
intense and terribil via of Godwin, he has sought,
in the hitherto unexplored phenomena of our nature,
for the subject matter of his fables; and, by the
agencies of these, he has produced effects equally new
and stupendous, without violating the eternal laws of
truth. To read, for the first time, one of Brown's best
romances, is a memorable circumstance in our intellec
tual life. Were his themes supernatural or magical, we
might forget them after perusal, or at any'rate, the
impression would not haunt our minds with unfailing
tenacity; but as the scenes he loves to depict (strange
though they are), arise out of those mysteries of our
nature, the effects of which we have all witnessed, or
may witness, and to which we are all more or less
subject, we cannot “bid his shadows depart” after he
has once raised them.
A writer, in a forgotten journal, comparing Brown
with Godwin, thus characterises the former: —
A 3

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