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Frances Brookeis "Circle of Friends": The Limits of Epistolarity in The History of Emily Montague

Frances Brookeis "Circle of Friends": The Limits of Epistolarity in The History of Emily Montague stephen carl archMichigan State University FrancesBrooke’s‘‘Circleof Friends’’ The Limits of Epistolarity in The History of Emily Montague The recent republication ofTheFemaleAmerican,firstpublished anonymously in 1767, has made available to us an important eighteenth- century transatlantic novel, one that raises a number of formal, feminist, and (post)colonial concerns central to our critical moment. Most signifi- cantly, perhaps, the availability of this edition gives early Americanists the chance, once again, to begin to relinquish the old critical chestnut that the history of the American novel ‘‘begins’’ in 1789 with the publication of William Hill Brown’sThePowerofSympathy, or—as is more true of under- graduate and graduate courses in the American novel—with Susannah Rowson’s 1792 republication in the United States ofCharlotte Temple or with Charles Brockden Brown’s publication in 1798 of the more avowedly ‘‘American’’ Wieland; or, The Transformation. The logic that the creation of the republic in 1789 coincides with the invention of the American novel has had and still has a deep hold upon our imagination, a hold that we will be loathe to give up until we reconstruct more definitively the history of the eighteenth-century transatlantic novel. In any such reconstruction, Frances Brooke’sTheHistoryof EmilyMon- tague (1769) will no doubt be one of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Early American Literature University of North Carolina Press

Frances Brookeis "Circle of Friends": The Limits of Epistolarity in The History of Emily Montague

Early American Literature , Volume 39 (3) – Jan 13, 2005

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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 The University of North Carolina Press.
ISSN
1534-147X

Abstract

stephen carl archMichigan State University FrancesBrooke’s‘‘Circleof Friends’’ The Limits of Epistolarity in The History of Emily Montague The recent republication ofTheFemaleAmerican,firstpublished anonymously in 1767, has made available to us an important eighteenth- century transatlantic novel, one that raises a number of formal, feminist, and (post)colonial concerns central to our critical moment. Most signifi- cantly, perhaps, the availability of this edition gives early Americanists the chance, once again, to begin to relinquish the old critical chestnut that the history of the American novel ‘‘begins’’ in 1789 with the publication of William Hill Brown’sThePowerofSympathy, or—as is more true of under- graduate and graduate courses in the American novel—with Susannah Rowson’s 1792 republication in the United States ofCharlotte Temple or with Charles Brockden Brown’s publication in 1798 of the more avowedly ‘‘American’’ Wieland; or, The Transformation. The logic that the creation of the republic in 1789 coincides with the invention of the American novel has had and still has a deep hold upon our imagination, a hold that we will be loathe to give up until we reconstruct more definitively the history of the eighteenth-century transatlantic novel. In any such reconstruction, Frances Brooke’sTheHistoryof EmilyMon- tague (1769) will no doubt be one of

Journal

Early American LiteratureUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: Jan 13, 2005

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