Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown

Poems, Volume 7

Edited by Michael C. Cohen and Alexandra Socarides - Series edited by Philip Barnard and Mark L. Kamrath

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) was a key writer of the revolutionary era and early U.S. republic, known for his landmark novels and other writings in a variety of genres. The Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown presents all of Brown’s non-novelistic writings—letters, political pamphlets, fictions, periodical writings, historical writings, and poety—in a seven-volume scholarly set. This series’ volumes are edited to the highest scholarly standards and will bear the seal of the Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions (MLA-CSE).

Poems,volume 7 of the series, is the first comprehensive collection of the poetry of Charles Brockden Brown (1771– 1810), one of the earliest professional writers in U.S. history. While Brown is well known as a novelist, his poetry has never before been collected, and many of the works included in this book appear in print for the first time in 200 years. The Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association has awarded the volume a seal of certification as an MLA Approved Scholarly Edition. Each edited text has a detailed textual note providing publication history, provenance, and information on attribution, along with extensive scholarly annotations. A historical introduction locates the poems in Brown’s biography, the print culture of the Revolutionary Atlantic world, and the literary history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while a textual essay provides full bibliographical information on the sources for all copy-texts, as well as an extensive description of the editorial protocols. The volume therefore promises to reshape our understanding of professional literary writing in the period after the American Revolution.

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 368 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-61148-456-4 • Hardback • October 2020 • $140.00 • (£108.00)

978-1-61148-457-1 • eBook • October 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)

Series: Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Poetry, Literary Collections / American / General, Literary Collections / General

Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown

Poems, Volume 7

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) was a key writer of the revolutionary era and early U.S. republic, known for his landmark novels and other writings in a variety of genres. The Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown presents all of Brown’s non-novelistic writings—letters, political pamphlets, fictions, periodical writings, historical writings, and poety—in a seven-volume scholarly set. This series’ volumes are edited to the highest scholarly standards and will bear the seal of the Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions (MLA-CSE).

Poems,volume 7 of the series, is the first comprehensive collection of the poetry of Charles Brockden Brown (1771– 1810), one of the earliest professional writers in U.S. history. While Brown is well known as a novelist, his poetry has never before been collected, and many of the works included in this book appear in print for the first time in 200 years. The Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association has awarded the volume a seal of certification as an MLA Approved Scholarly Edition. Each edited text has a detailed textual note providing publication history, provenance, and information on attribution, along with extensive scholarly annotations. A historical introduction locates the poems in Brown’s biography, the print culture of the Revolutionary Atlantic world, and the literary history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while a textual essay provides full bibliographical information on the sources for all copy-texts, as well as an extensive description of the editorial protocols. The volume therefore promises to reshape our understanding of professional literary writing in the period after the American Revolution.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Bucknell University Press

Pages: 368 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-61148-456-4 • Hardback • October 2020 • $140.00 • (£108.00)

978-1-61148-457-1 • eBook • October 2020 • $45.00 • (£35.00)

Series: Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Poetry, Literary Collections / American / General, Literary Collections / General

Author

Michael C. Cohen is associate professor of English at UCLA.

Alexandra Socarides is associate professor of English at the University of Missouri.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

The Poems of Charles Brockden Brown
1. “On Some of His School Fellows”
2. “Aretas”
3. “For the Grocer’s Window”
4. “To Miss D. P.”
5. “The Rising Glory of America”
6. “The Times”
7. “Epistle the First”
8. “In Praise of Schuylkill”
9. “To Estrina”
10. “To D. F.”
11. “An Inscription for General Washington’s Tomb Stone”
12. “Henry”
13. “Sonnet. Written after hearing a Song sung by several Sisters”
14. “To Ella”
15. “The Smile. Sonnet to Caroline”
16. “Song”
17. “Sonnet”
18. [“In ‘Delphy town”]
19. “A Peter-Pindarical Performance”
20. [“When Bringhurst and Wilkins are here”]
21. “Introduction to a Heroi-Comic Poem on Loo”
22. [“Profuse and prolix is the treat”]
23. [“Of sweet little things, a sweet musical string”]
24. “To Stella – No. I”
25. “To Stella – No. III”
26. “To Stella – No. V”
27. “A Billet-Doux”
28. [“Tis party that destroys the state”]
29. [“From Virtue’s blissful paths away”]
30. [“Sleep, extend thy downy pinion”]
31. [“The breeze awakes, the bark prepares”]
32. [“Ah! far beyond this world of woes”]
33. “To Stella”
34. “Monody on the Death of George Washington”
35. [“’Tis not the river’s pebbly bound”]
36. “Jessy’s Song”
37. [“Long strove a rueful fate to bend”]
38. [“Inchanting Tongue!”]
39. “To Laura. On Her Attachment to Homer’s Iliad”
40. “The Rans de Vache of Tuscany”
41. “L’Amoroso”
42. “The Water-Drinker, an Anti-Anacreontic”
43. “The Poet’s Prayer. (Not for fame, but for virtue.) An Epistle to Stella”
44. [“They came at noon & chose to stay”]
45. “Solitary Worship”
46. “Alliteration”
47. “To Laura, Offended”
48. “To Clara”
49. [“Marry wisdom, and beauty & wealth if you can”]
50. “Devotion. An Epistle”
51. “To Clara (On the Death of a Friend)”
Illustrations

Historical Essay

Textual Essay

Description of Provenance

Appendix 1: Disputed Attributions
1. “Utrum horum Mavis, elige”
2. “A Negro’s Lamentation”
3. “Pleasures of the Table”
Appendix 2: Poems previously attributed to Brown now excluded

Selected Bibliography

Index

Reviews

By consolidating this body of work, the seventh volume of The Collected Writings of Charles Brockden Brown provides a critical and contextual glimpse into both Brown’s oeuvre and a literary culture that prized verse as much as it did other genres. Engaging and comprehensive, this volume systematically compiles the poems that Brown produced throughout his lifetime, giving special attention to their relationship to the corresponding social, literary, and political life of the early Republic…. [T]hey go beyond Brown’s output to situate his work within a fresh understanding of early American poetry. Indeed, this volume’s major contribution is not only that it augments our understanding of Brown’s work, but also that it trenchantly illuminates the connections between disparate genres and interpersonal discourse—connections that merit further study.

— Early American Literature