("Paul Felton" is an 1822 novella by Richard Henry Dana, S...)
"Paul Felton" is an 1822 novella by Richard Henry Dana, Sr. (1787-1879) combining romance, murder, and elements of the supernatural. The book offers a distinctly American take on the Gothic literary tradition, re-imagining America's unsettled landscape as a site of temptation and minions of evil. Originally published in Dana's literary journal "The Idle Man," "Paul Felton" has not been published in wide distribution in modern times. This edition, with a new prologue and minor commentary, opens the door to new scholarship and understanding on this book.
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Richard Henry Dana was born on November 15, 1787 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, of distinguished ancestry. His father was Francis Dana, Revolutionary patriot, and his mother was Elizabeth Ellery, daughter of William Ellery, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. There were seven children of this marriage, an elder sister becoming the wife of Washington Allston. Almost all his life was passed within the borders of his native Massachusetts.
Entering Harvard College in 1804, Dana was not graduated in regular course, being implicated in the "rotten cabbage" rebellion of the classes in 1807. Many years later he received his degree as of 1808. His studies of law in Boston, Newport, and Baltimore were interspersed with wide readings in English literature.
Dana represented Cambridge in the Massachusetts legislature after being admitted to the bar in 1811. Neither the law, nor politics, nor any form of public affairs, attracted him permanently, and before he was twenty-five years of age he had abandoned them wholly for literature, thus forsaking the profession which so many of his forebears had adorned.
For some years after the establishment of the North American Review in 1815, he was associated with its editorial direction and contributed to it reviews and essays on literary subjects. In 1821 he began the publication of a periodical called The Idle Man, modeled upon Washington Irving's Salmagundi, continued it for about six months with no financial success, and wrote some of his earliest fiction, including two novels, "Tom Thornton" and "Paul Felton, " for its pages. He also wrote for and contributed some of his first poetry to the New York Review--edited by his warm friend William Cullen Bryant--the American Quarterly Observer, The Biblical Repository, The Literary and Theological Review, and other periodical publications.
In 1827 his first book of poetry, The Buccaneer and Other Poems, was published, followed in 1833 by his Poems and Prose Writings, which seventeen years later was brought out in a new and extended edition. A reviewer in Blackwood's Magazine described "The Buccaneer" as "by far the most powerful and original of American poetical compositions, " and added that, although Dana was "no servile follower of those great masters, " his style showed the influence of Crabbe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. The supernatural is one of its dominant elements, and for it he may have derived some inspiration from "The Ancient Mariner. " Some of his poems appear in anthologies and school books on literature.
Although his reputation survived through his entire lifetime, his active career practically ended by the time he was forty. He had acquired no popularity, none of his writings appealing to the general public, and he did not seek it.
Perhaps his most conspicuous appearance in public was in 1839-40, when he delivered a course of eight lectures on Shakespeare, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities, contending that Shakespeare was the greatest poet of the English language, and not Pope, as was then claimed by many authorities.
During more than half his years he lived in a quiet and dignified retirement, writing, studying, reading, in Cambridge in early life, later in Boston, and during the summer on the shores of Cape Ann, where his son Richard Henry bought an estate for him in 1845. Although he had been a delicate child, he lived to reach his ninety-second year, during which he died at his home in Boston.
The influence of Dana on the literary development of the country came from the vigorous thought, simplicity, and directness of expression which marked his work, in contrast to the sentimental and florid style which characterized most writings of his time. His 1821 novel "Paul Felton" is considered one of the earliest examples of Gothic fiction in the United States.
("Paul Felton" is an 1822 novella by Richard Henry Dana, S...)
During the great controversy in 1825-35 which resulted in the schism between the Trinitarians and the Unitarians in the Congregational Church, he took active part with the former, and later in life became affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Dana was a proponent of Romanticism, despised didacticism, and disagreed with the Transcendental movement.
Quotations: "Much that was once held to be presumptuous novelty. .. became little better than commonplace".
Dana was a member of the Anthology Club. In 1849, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician.
Dana was a notable personality and a man of physical and mental distinction.
As a writer he had little sympathy with or interest in the affairs of the world, or with social and personal progress in politics, art, science, or literature, tendencies which were foremost in the son who bore his name. His view was academic, and he looked upon mankind and the world from the library and the scholar's cloister.
Dana married Ruth Charlotte, daughter of John Wilson Smith, of Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1813, and they had four children.
