What was the 'first American novel'? On this Independence Day, a look at what it started

July 03, 2024 3:03 AM
By Associated Press



This image released by Penguin Classics shows the title page of the first edition of the 1789 book "The Power of Sympathy" by William Hill Brown. (Penguin Classics via AP)

NEW YORK — In the winter of 1789, around the time George Washington was elected the country's first president, a Boston-based printer quietly launched another American institution.

William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, published anonymously by Isaiah Thomas & Company, is widely cited as something momentous: the first American novel.

Around 100 pages long, Brown's narrative tells of two young New Englanders whose love affair abruptly and tragically ends when they learn a shocking secret that makes their relationship unbearable. The dedication page, addressed to the “Young Ladies of United Columbia” (the United States), promised an exposé of “the Fatal consequences of Seduction” and a prescription for the "Economy of Human Life."

Outside of Boston society, though, few would have known or cared whether The Power of Sympathy marked any kind of literary milestone.

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