Charles Brockden Brown – 1771-1810

In his short life, Philadelphia-born Brown wrote six important early American novels—including two classics of “Gothic” fiction, Wieland and Edgar Huntley— and published and edited important early periodicals. His fiction shows profound psychological insight, which prefigured the great work of later American novelists such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, but he was perhaps even more important to the nation’s literature and culture as the first American writer to earn a living solely from literary pursuits.