The indebtedness of our earliest American fiction to old world models has been made plain on numerous occasions. The Power of Sympathy, commonly regarded as our first novel, and the works which immediately followed, obviously owe much to Samuel Richardson; our earliest professional novelist, Charles Brockden Brown, has been branded at once a disciple of Godwin—his Arthur Mervyn a lineal descendent of Caleb Williams—and a member of the Gothic School. Sterne's name, and the influence of his Shandean sensibility this side the water, have been bruited about. Yet, so far, one immediate and important source, the French Heroic Romance—those great folios of Scudéry, Gomberville, La Calprenède, and their compeers, translated, imitated, and avidly read in the mother country—has been almost totally overlooked.
Marc Amfreville. Charles Brockden Brown. La part du doute.
