The Literary Museum and the Unsettling of the Early American Novel

This introductory chapter discusses the intertwined histories of novel and magazine publications and how certain authors, generally attributed to the “rise of the novel,” have made a significant shift from novel-writing to periodical culture. In particular, the chapter examines the career of Charles Brockden Brown as he draws influences from other writers during the time while also developing an editorial function which he would work to define in his last fictions and in his periodical work of his final years. This chapter also explores the writings of a particular author whom Brown has read—Hannah Webster Foster, whose career witnesses an even more abrupt turn away from the novel.