Wieland; or The Transformation (1798) ties revolutionary-era Gothic themes to struggles over the politics of Enlightenment on both sides of the Atlantic.
This edition of Wieland includes Brown's Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist and writings on Cicero, as well as his key essays on history and literature, and selections from contemporary German and other texts that figure in the novel's background and in the charged atmosphere of the late 1790s.
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) is an important figure in Gothic literature, credited with writing one of the first American Gothic novels. He was born in Pennsylvania to a Quaker family and originally trained to become a lawyer. Unable to apply the Gothic European settings of crumbling castles to America, he relocated his tales to rural locales, but maintained the same chilling atmosphere within his stories. Philip Barnard is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kansas. Stephen Shapiro is Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick.