I. (Isaac) Mitchell

An American writer and journalist born around 1759 near Albany, New York, he is best known today for The Asylum, or Alonzo and Melissa, a Gothic-style romance that first appeared in serialized form and was later published as a book. The novel became his lasting claim to fame and is often noted in discussions of early American popular fiction.

He also worked extensively in journalism. Sources describe him as an editor and newspaperman associated with Jeffersonian Republican politics, with ties to newspaper publishing in New York State, including Albany and Poughkeepsie. That mix of political writing and serialized storytelling helps explain the energy and pace of his fiction.

He died in 1812. Although not widely known outside specialist circles today, his reputation has endured because Alonzo and Melissa remained a memorable part of nineteenth-century reading culture.