Wieland or the Transformation. Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist by Charles Brockden Brown (review)

Studies in American Fiction245 Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland or the Transformation. Memoirs of Corwin the Biloquist. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1978. 310 pp. Paper: $4.75. In 1926 Fred Lewis Pattee's edition of Wieland and "Memoirs of Carwin" appeared in the American Authors Series under the supervision of Stanley T. Williams. This edition was reprinted in the 1950s and again in the 1960s. Though he conscientiously used the 1798 first edition as his copy text, Pattee did not have the bibliographical techniques or, presumably, the time that the Kent textual editor, S. W. Reid, could devote to the preparation of this new edition. Reid's principles are carefully set forth in the 1977 volume of the "Bicentennial Edition," on which the present paperback is based. Since the 1798 text is much cleaner than the texts of Brown's other novels, the improvements of Reid's over Pattee's version are not enormous, but they are significant and increase the clarity of Brown's prose, murky at best. Thus in Chapter 15, in the paragraph following the letter at the beginning of the chapter, Pattee, relying on the 1798 text, reads "Yet this request is preferred with the utmost gravity. It is unaccompanied by an appearance of uncommon earnestness." Yet the request in the quoted letter appears quite earnest. So we have in Reid's text "It is not unaccompanied. . , ." The compositor, Reid conjectures in the notes to the 1977 edition, may have been "confused by the presence of two other negatives in the sentence" (p. 376). But however uncomfortable three negatives are, the meaning requires the insertion of this third one. Indeed, Reid defends one reading in his text of "Carwin" as having "a Brownian awkwardness about it" (p. 381) . The student and indeed most readers will not need to consult Reid's excellent textual notes, omitted from this adaptation; the 1978 paperback is eminently satisfactory, with the best text we have had. For the 1978 publication, Professors Reid and S.W. Krause have prepared a new critical and historical essay that should be widely read. It provides information about the author and his composition of Wieland and intelligent criticism on the book. Especially helpful are pages on the relation of Wieland to Samuel Richardson's fiction and to the gothic. The presence of this essay should not, however, prevent those interested in Wieland from reading the longer "Historical Essay" by Alexander Cowie in the 1977 volume. Perhaps the editors judged that a student might find Cowie's essay too full, too detailed. Since Brown studies are flooding the pages of learned journals, it might have been helpful to have a selected bibliography of discussions of Wieland included. To the ones listed in the notes to Reid and Krause's essay I would add Larzer Ziffs PMLA essay (1962), W.M. Manly's in American Literature (1963), Donald Ringe's book-length study of Brown (1966), three articles on Brown published together in Early American Literature by William L. Hedges, Michael Bell, and Paul Witherington (1974), and Leslie Fiedler on Brown in Love and Death in theAmerican Novel (I960, 1966). Pattee's 1926 essay also remains useful. The paperback being reviewed here should be the text adopted by those teaching courses in the American novel. It is a rather handsome, distinctive volume, with excellent print. I am happy to own both it and its 1977 parent volume. Too often the intelligence and expert knowledge that have been applied to the preparation of a text—notably ones approved by the Center for Editions of American Authors, as the 1977 edition is—are all but wasted as professors and students continue to use the same old texts. There is no excuse for such negligence with this reasonably-priced paperback available. University of Massachusetts, AmherstEverett Emerson ...