William Brown

1765 (age 28)

Boston, Massachusetts, United States

The suicide of a neighbor, Fanny Apthorp, allegedly seduced by a brother-in-law, apparently prompted Brown to insert in the former a group of letters paralleling Fanny's story and to publish it, in February 1789, as The Power of Sympathy, or The Triumph of Nature, "Founded in Fact, " widely advertised by the printer, Isaiah Thomas, as the first American novel. The Apthorp family, with Brown's consent, are said to have bought and destroyed most of the copies. To Thomas's Massachusetts Magazine, from its first issue in January 1789, to the beginning of 1793, Brown contributed lyrics, sonnets, moral tales, essays, and miscellaneous items. The Columbian Centinel, Boston, printed from September 1 to December 11, 1790, his "Yankee" series of essays, perhaps his best work in this field. He participated in the agitation for legislation permitting the opening of a theatre in Massachusetts, and wrote in anticipation a tragedy on Major André and a comedy, Penelope. He prepared for the law, and in the winter of 1792-93 went to North Carolina, living with his sister Elizabeth and her husband, Thomas Hichborn, at Murfreesboro, and studying, perhaps with William R. Davie of Halifax. In the summer of 1793 he fell ill of fever and died, at Murfreesboro, in his twenty-eighth year. Catherine Byles wrote to Davie on October 29, 1793, for the manuscript of Brown's tragedy, West Point Preserved, or The Treason of Arnold, which was enacted seven nights at the Haymarket Theatre, Boston, in April 1797. The manuscript was used by William Dunlap when finishing his own tragedy, André. Twelve years after Brown's death his cousin Joshua Belcher, coeditor of the Boston Magazine (1805 - 06) and the Emerald (1806 - 07), printed more than fifty pieces from his manuscript, including a set of prose maxims in the manner of Rochefoucauld and a series of humorous beast fables in verse. In 1807 Belcher and Armstrong also published Brown's remaining novel, Ira and Isabella, or The Natural Children. Brown's work, hasty and unrevised, is interesting chiefly for its early date and a range of experimentation equaled by none of his American contemporaries. Aside from a brief mention in William Allen's American Biographical and Historical Dictionary, he received scant notice until 1894. In that year a mistaken attribution of The Power of Sympathy to Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, poetess and sister to Fanny Apthorp, called forth a protest from Brown's surviving niece, Rebecca (Volintine) Thompson, while the novel was being serially reprinted in the Bostonian (October 1894 - April 1895). A facsimile reprint was issued by the Facsimile Text Society in 1937 under the title William Hill Brown: The Power of Sympathy. Reproduced from the First Edition.

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The Power of Sympathy and the Coquette by William Hill Brown (2013-01-01)

The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth

(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

The power of sympathy, or, The triumph of nature founded in truth. Volume 1 of 2

( Title: The power of sympathy, or, The triumph of nature...)

The Power of Sympathy

(William Hill Brown (1765-1793) was an American poet, dram...)

THE POWER OF SYMPATHY. Edited by William S. Kable

(The power of sympathy William S. Kable)

The power of sympathy, or, The triumph of nature founded in truth. Volume 2 of 2

( Title: The power of sympathy, or, The triumph of nature...)

Ira and Isabella

(A spectacular novel published in 1807 in which Brown has ...)

The Power of Sympathy and the Coquette (Penguin Classics)

(Written in epistolary form and drawn from actual events, ...)

The Power of Sympathy

(The first American novel, The Power of Sympathy, was dedi...)

Ira And Isabella Or The Natural Children

(This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

The Power of Sympathy: The Original Two Volumes Contained In a New One Volume Edition (First American Novel) (The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature is an ei...)

William Hill Brown

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Background

William Hill Brown was baptized at the Hollis Street Church, Boston, December 1, 1765, the son of Gawen Brown, celebrated clockmaker, from Northumberland, England, and his third wife, Elizabeth (Hill) Brown, daughter of Colonel and Justice John Hill. Of his half-brothers, Gawen and John Brown were Revolutionary officers, and Mather Brown was a painter in London.

Education

The latter's mother was Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. Mather Byles, poet and wit. Her sister, Catherine Byles, maintained a strong interest in her nephew-by-marriage and was his early literary confidante and adviser. He appears in her correspondence with Mather Brown as a likable, fun-loving boy, helping in his father's shop on State Street. Perhaps under her tutelage, he obtained an unusual acquaintance with the English writers and imitated them in a surprising range of verse and prose forms. Among these efforts were two brief moralistic novels on the theme of two lovers who learn that they are children of the same father, seducer of the girl's mother. One story, in epistolary form, ended in tragedy; the other, by a tour de force, happily.

Career

The suicide of a neighbor, Fanny Apthorp, allegedly seduced by a brother-in-law, apparently prompted Brown to insert in the former a group of letters paralleling Fanny's story and to publish it, in February 1789, as The Power of Sympathy, or The Triumph of Nature, "Founded in Fact, " widely advertised by the printer, Isaiah Thomas, as the first American novel.

The Apthorp family, with Brown's consent, are said to have bought and destroyed most of the copies. To Thomas's Massachusetts Magazine, from its first issue in January 1789, to the beginning of 1793, Brown contributed lyrics, sonnets, moral tales, essays, and miscellaneous items. The Columbian Centinel, Boston, printed from September 1 to December 11, 1790, his "Yankee" series of essays, perhaps his best work in this field. He participated in the agitation for legislation permitting the opening of a theatre in Massachusetts, and wrote in anticipation a tragedy on Major André and a comedy, Penelope.

He prepared for the law, and in the winter of 1792-93 went to North Carolina, living with his sister Elizabeth and her husband, Thomas Hichborn, at Murfreesboro, and studying, perhaps with William R. Davie of Halifax. In the summer of 1793 he fell ill of fever and died, at Murfreesboro, in his twenty-eighth year.

Catherine Byles wrote to Davie on October 29, 1793, for the manuscript of Brown's tragedy, West Point Preserved, or The Treason of Arnold, which was enacted seven nights at the Haymarket Theatre, Boston, in April 1797.

The manuscript was used by William Dunlap when finishing his own tragedy, André. Twelve years after Brown's death his cousin Joshua Belcher, coeditor of the Boston Magazine (1805 - 06) and the Emerald (1806 - 07), printed more than fifty pieces from his manuscript, including a set of prose maxims in the manner of Rochefoucauld and a series of humorous beast fables in verse. In 1807 Belcher and Armstrong also published Brown's remaining novel, Ira and Isabella, or The Natural Children. Brown's work, hasty and unrevised, is interesting chiefly for its early date and a range of experimentation equaled by none of his American contemporaries. Aside from a brief mention in William Allen's American Biographical and Historical Dictionary, he received scant notice until 1894.

In that year a mistaken attribution of The Power of Sympathy to Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, poetess and sister to Fanny Apthorp, called forth a protest from Brown's surviving niece, Rebecca (Volintine) Thompson, while the novel was being serially reprinted in the Bostonian (October 1894 - April 1895).

A facsimile reprint was issued by the Facsimile Text Society in 1937 under the title William Hill Brown: The Power of Sympathy. Reproduced from the First Edition.

Achievements

William Brown was the author of the popular romantic tale “Harriot, or the Domestic Reconciliation” (1789), which was published in the first issue of Massachusetts Magazine, and the play West Point Preserved (1797), a tragedy about the death of a Revolutionary spy. He also wrote a series of verse fables, a comedy in West Indies style (Penelope), essays, and a short second novel about incest and seduction, Ira and Isabella (published posthumously, 1807).