Wieland

Often called the first American Gothic novel, this 1798 tale is narrated by Clara Wieland, whose comfortable Pennsylvania family is torn apart by disembodied voices and a father’s mysterious death by apparent spontaneous combustion. When a drifter named Carwin appears, the household’s faith, reason, and sanity all begin to give way, and religious mania hardens into horror. Brown refuses easy explanations, leaving the reader to weigh supernatural terror against psychological delusion and plain human deceit. Written in the young republic, the book uses American settings to probe how fragile the rational mind really is. It remains a foundational work of early American fiction, offered here as a free PDF and EPUB.