Ormond by Charles Brockden Brown (review)

HUMANITIES 247 ethnicity and health care, and other such topics constitute a more encompassing overview of work being done in the field of medical history. This reflects the expanding research interests and broadening parameters of the field during the past two decades. New scholarship in such areas as the history of nursing in Canada, which is covered much more comprehensively than was the case in the first volume, as well as Amerindian and Inuit medicine, mental health, folk and popular medicine, hygiene, maternal health, sex behaviour, and social welfare, among other categories, is again evidence of the growth of this discipline. Users may be disappointed to learn that there are no annotations in this bibliography. In the introduction, Roland and Bernier state that this is an enumerative bibliography, and that they have made no attempt to exclude >bad= or badly written history. Fair enough, and it is admirably inclusive of the editors. Arguably, the onerous task of writing annotations for this bibliography would perhaps have delayed its publication yet another sixteen years! More often than not, users can quickly assess by page length and publication source the suitability of a reference for their research. Still, it is my contention that annotations in bibliographies are highly desirable, so as to clarify content and identify works of differing theoretical frameworks or methodologies, which is not always evident from titles. It is hoped that the next volume of this bibliography will be available electronically, preferably on-line. Researchers in the field of medical history, spoiled by HISTLINE and MEDLINE, are accessing an increasing number of reference guides and resource materials on-line. Publishing the bibliography on the Web would allow for easy updates, keeping the bibliography current and accessible. Knowing that this project has now been transferred from McMaster University to the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, under the direction of Barbara Craig, I suspect that this may already be contemplated, if not in progress. Roland and Bernier should be congratulated on producing a first-rate bibliography for historians of Canadian medicine, and for taking steps towards ensuring the continuation and evolution of this bibliographic project. (SHELLEY MCKELLAR) Charles Brockden Brown. Ormond. Edited by Mary Chapman Broadview Press 1999. 302. $16.95 Of the four intriguing novels Charles Brockden Brown wrote between 1798 and 1800 while moving between Philadelphia and New York, two (Wieland; or, The Transformation and Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker) are currently available in affordable, well-introduced versions from Penguin. Arthur Mervyn; or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 is only available in a flimsy and unattractive edition from the not entirely reliable NCUP. The Library of 248 LETTERS IN CANADA 2000 America recently published Three Gothic Novels by Brown, but chose, oddly, to leave out Ormond; or, The Secret Witness (1799). Those of us who teach Brown, therefore, can be very grateful to Broadview Press and Mary Chapman for at last bringing us an elegant and affordable edition of Brown=s least studied novel. It must be said that Charles Brockden Brown=s novels need all the help they can get. An attractive cover, high-quality paper, an animated and thoughtful introduction, a set of well-chosen contextual documents, and an impressive bibliography go a long way towards keeping at bay our discomfort with Brown=s structural inelegance or his stilted dialogue. This is a good thing, however, because despite the inelegance, surveys of American literature desperately need Brown=s presence at the end of the eighteenth century. His novels should be read next to the elegant and >reasonable= classics of American political philosophy (the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, the letters of Madison and Jefferson) in order to remind us that the world=s most confident nation was always uncertain about the radicalism of its own revolution. >Composed,= writes Chapman, >when the Federalists were drafting the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, which attempted to restrict the influx of extremist views from France and other sites of democratic revolution, the novel poses questions about the feasibility of achieving absolute independence from other individuals, communities, and nations.= Ormond blends the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793 (in what was then the nation=s capital, Philadelphia), the...