Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly: Sleepwalking through the Wildeness

America has opened new views to the naturalist and politician, but has seldome furnished themes to the moral painter. That new springs of action, and new motives to curiosity should operate; that the field of investigation, opened to us by our own country, should differ essentially from those which exist in Europe, may be readily conceived. The sources of amusement to the fancy and instruction to the heart, that are peculiar to ourselves, are equally numerous and inexhaustible. It is the purpose of this work to profit by some of these sources; to exhibit a series of adventures, growing out of the condition of our country, and connected with one of the most common and most wonderful diseases or affections of the human frame. One merit the writer may at least claim; that of calling forth the passions and engaging the sympathy of the reader, by means hitherto unemployed by preceding authors. Puerile uperstition and exploded manners; Gothic castles and chimeras, are the materials usually employed for this end. The incidents of Indian hostility, and the perils of the western wilderness, are far more suitable; and, for a native of America to overlook these, would admit of no apology. 1. An Emergent National Culture Brown’s prefatory “To the Public”of Edgar Huntly, argues that it is the work of a “moral painter”. The novel is original in that it avoids the Gothic machinery of medieval castles and superstitions to trace instead adventures “growing out of the condition of our country” and the “perils of the western wilderness” 1 . 1 NORMAN S. GRABO, Introduction to Edgar Huntly or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker, New York, Penguin Books, 1988, p. xv-xvi