author
William Hill Brown
1765–1793
Best known for writing what is usually considered the first American novel, he helped open the door for fiction in the early United States. His brief career left a surprisingly lasting mark on American literary history.
1 Audiobook
The power of sympathy: or, The triumph of nature. Founded in truth.
by William Hill Brown
About the author
Born in Boston in November 1765, William Hill Brown was an early American novelist, essayist, and dramatist. He is remembered above all for The Power of Sympathy (1789), an anonymously published epistolary novel that is widely regarded as the first American novel.
Brown also wrote pieces for periodicals, including the serial essay The Reformer in Massachusetts Magazine, and he produced other fiction and dramatic work. His writing often mixed sentiment, moral instruction, and social criticism, reflecting the literary tastes and reform-minded culture of the late eighteenth century.
He died young in 1793, probably before reaching his twenty-eighth birthday, but his reputation has endured because of the place The Power of Sympathy holds in American literature. Even with a small body of work, he remains an important figure in the story of how the American novel began.