Wieland; Or, The Transformation: An American Tale
Charles Brockden Brown
1771 – 1810
ENPublic Domain
Summary
"Wieland; Or, The Transformation: An American Tale" by Charles Brockden Brown is a novel published in 1798. Often considered the first American Gothic novel, it follows Clara Wieland and her family as they experience mysterious disembodied voices that lead to devastating consequences. When a strange visitor named Carwin arrives with the ability to throw his voice, the line between supernatural phenomena and human deception blurs fatally. Religious fanaticism collides with rationality as Clara struggles to understand the horrifying events that destroy her once-peaceful family. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Subjects
- Combustion, Spontaneous — Fiction
- Epistolary fiction
- Fathers — Death — Fiction
- Gothic fiction
- Horror tales
- Pennsylvania — History — Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 — Fiction
- Psychological fiction
- Radicals — Fiction
- Religious fanaticism — Fiction
- Siblings — Fiction