BROWN, CHARLES BROCKDEN Ameri can novelist, was born of Quaker parents in Philadelphia, Jan. 17, 17 71. Of delicate constitution, he early devoted himself to study; his principal amusement was the invention of ideal architectural designs, devised on the most extensive and elaborate scale. This talent for construction later assumed the shape of Utopian projects for perfect commonwealths, and of a series of novels distinguished by the ingenuity and consistent evolution of the plot. The transition between these intellectual phases is marked by a juvenile romance Carsol, which depicts an imaginary com munity, and shows how thoroughly the young American was in spired by Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraf t. From the latter he derived the idea of his next work, The Dialogue of Alcuin (1797), an enthusiastic but perienced essay on the question of woman's rights and liberties. From Godwin he learned his terse style, and the art of oping a plot from a single logical problem or mysterious cumstance. The novels which he rapidly produced are wild and weird in conception, with dents bordering on the natural, yet never transgressing the limit of possibility. In land; or the Transformation (1708), a seemingly inexplicable mystery is resolved into a case of ventriloquism. Arthur Mervyn (1798-1800) is remarkable for the description of the epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia, and Edgar Huntly (Philadelphia, 18oi) for the effective use made of somnambulism, and for the introduction of the American Indian into fiction. Ormond (1799) contains one character, stantia Dudley, which excited the enthusiastic admiration of Shelley. After a long illness, Brown died of consumption, Feb.
22, 1810.