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[BROWN, CHARLES BROCKDEN.]. Wieland; or the Transformation. An American Tale. New York: 1798. 1st ed. 12mo. [3], 298 pp. Full contemp. tree calf, leather label on spine (Hinges cracked but sound). $950.00

 

BAL 1496. Wright I, 426. Evans 33461. An American gothic classic. The author's first book, following only the essay Alcuin, published the same year. "Brown was the first American professional man of letters. Wieland, a Gothic thriller laid in Pennsylvania, includes ventriloquism, death by spontaneous combustion, an escape from an insane asylum and a multiple murder. A contemporary reviewer called it 'certainly the best novel this country has produced...' It was later praised by Poe and Hawthorne. Thomas Love Peacock said it was 'one of the few tales in which the final explanation of the apparently supernatural does not destroy or diminish the original effect.'"-Seven Gables, First Books by American Authors (1965), 39.