Charles Brockden Brown

Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale, usually simply called Wieland, is the first major work by Charles Brockden Brown, published in 1798, Wieland is the first - and most famous - American Gothic novelSet sometime between the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War, Wieland details the horrible events that befall Clara Wieland and her brother Theodore's family. Clara and Theodore's father was a German immigrant who founded his own religion; he came to America just before the American Revolution with the conviction to spread his religion to the indigenous people.

In this classic and timeless novel, we are immersed in a world that goes from sanity to insanity. In Wieland, we explore the realities of life on the eve of the American Revolution through religious delusions, fanaticism, and horrific violence. A family living on an estate outside Philadelphia is visited by mysterious voices, seemingly coming out of thin air. Soon thereafter, an itinerant character named Carwin will visit the family. Carwin is a mysterious stranger as well as a ventriloquist. Violence erupts when the family's young patriarch believes that he hears God's voice demanding a human sacrifice as a sign of faith. In the midst of all the insanity, the family will undergo a transformation involving horror, spontaneous combustion, false faith, psychological perversion, ventriloquism, and murder. Testing the limits of religious and literary authority in the new America, Brown's novel has for more than two centuries kept readers debating questions of agency, accountability, and revolutionary politics as the story's moral chaos unfolds. Visit ladyvalkyrie.com for more Classics as well as for other titles Categories/Series of books