NEW YORK (AP) — In the winter of 1789, around the time George Washington was elected the country's first president, a Boston-based printer quietly launched another American institution.
William Hill Brown's “The Power of Sympathy,” published anonymously by Isaiah Thomas & Company, is widely cited as something momentous: the first American novel.
Around 100 pages long, Brown's narrative tells of two young New Englanders whose love affair abruptly and tragically ends when they learn a shocking secret that makes their relationship unbearable. The dedication page, addressed to the “Young Ladies of United Columbia” (the United States), promised an exposé of “the Fatal consequences of Seduction” and a prescription for the "Economy of Human Life."
Outside of Boston society, though, few would have known or cared whether “The Power of Sympathy” marked any kind of literary milestone.
“If you picked 10 random citizens, I doubt it would have mattered to any of them,” says David Lawrimore, an associate professor of English at the University of Idaho who has written often about early U.S. literature. “Most people weren't thinking about the first American novel.”
Subtitled “The Triumph of Nature. Founded in Truth,” Brown's book is in many ways characteristic of the era, whether its epistolary format, its Anglicized prose, its unidentified author, or its pious message. But “The Power of Sympathy” also includes themes that reflected the aspirations and anxieties of a young country and still resonate now.
Dana McClain, an assistant professor of English at Holy Family University, notes that Brown was an outspoken Federalist, believing in a strong national government, and shared his contemporaries' preoccupation with forging a stable republican citizenry. The letters in “The Power of Sympathy” include reflections on class, temperament and the differences between North and South, notably the “aristocratic temper” of Southern slave holders that endangered “domestic quietude," as if anticipating the next century's Civil War.
Like many other early American writers, fiction and nonfiction, Brown tied the behavior of women to the fate of the larger society. The novel's correspondents fret about the destabilizing “power of pleasure” and how female envy “inundates the land with a flood of scandal.” Virtue is likened to a “mighty river” that "fertilizes the country through which it passes and increases in magnitude and force until it empty itself into the ocean.”
Brown also examines at length the ways novels might be a path to corruption or a vehicle to uplift, mirroring current debates over the banning and restrictions of books in schools and libraries.
“Most of the novels with which our female libraries are overrun are built upon on a foundation not always placed on strict morality, and in the pursuit of of objects not always probable or praiseworthy,” one of Brown's characters warns. “Novels, not regulated on the chaste principles of true friendship, rational love, and connubial duty, appear to me totally unfit to form the minds of women, of friends, or of wives.”
Brown was likely more interested in shaping minds than in literary glory. “The Great American Novel” is a favorite catchphrase but wasn't coined until the 1860s. During Brown's lifetime, novels were a relatively crude art form and were valued mostly for satire, light entertainment or moral instruction. Few writers identified themselves as “novelists”: Brown was known as a poet, and essayist and the composer of an opera.
Even he recognized the book’s lower stature, writing in the novel's preface: “This species of writing hath not been received with universal approbation."
“The Power of Sympathy” was commonly cited as the first American novel in the 1800s, but few bothered debating it until the 20th century. Scholars then agreed that honors should belong to the first written and published in the United States by an author born and still residing in the country.
Those guidelines disqualified such earlier works as Charlotte Ramsay Lennox's “The Life of Harriot Stuart” and Thomas Atwood Digges' “Adventures of Alonso.” Another contender was "Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to Mecca,” a prose adventure by college students Hugh Henry Brackenridge and Philip Freneau, both of whom went on to prominent public careers. Written around 1770, the manuscript was later believed lost and wasn't published in full until 1975.
Brown's novel was unexamined for so long that only in the late 19th century did the public even discover he had written it. Many had credited the Boston poet Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, whose family had endured a scandal similar to the one in “The Power of Sympathy.”
In 1894-95, editor Arthur W. Brayley of the Bostonian serialized the novel in his magazine, identifying Morton as the author. But after being contacted by Brown's niece, Rebecca Vollentine Thompson, Brayley published a lengthy correction, titled “The Real Author of the ‘Power of Sympathy.’”
Thompson herself added a preface to a 1900 reissue, noting that Brown was close to Morton's family and alleging that the publication had been “suppressed” because Brown had bared an “unfortunate scandal.”
A clock maker's son, Brown was a Boston native, likely born in 1765. He was well-read, connected, culturally conservative and politically minded; one of his first published writings was an unflattering poem about Daniel Shays, the namesake for the 1786-87 rebellion of impoverished Revolutionary War veterans in Massachusetts. Brown is also the author of several posthumous releases, including the play “The Treason of Arnold” and the novel “Ira and Isabella.”
His unofficial standing as “America's First Novelist” did not lead to broader fame. The novel, currently in print through a 1996 edition from Penguin Classics, remains more of interest to specialists and antiquarians than to general readers.
Brown was not yet 30 when he died in North Carolina, in 1793, from what is believed to be malaria. He apparently never married or had children. No memorials or other historical sites are dedicated to him. No literary societies have been formed in his name.
His burial site is unknown.
This image released by Penguin Classics shows the title page of the first edition of the 1789 book "The Power of Sympathy" by William Hill Brown. (Penguin Classics via AP)
TULUM, Mexico (AP) — Hurricane Beryl swirled ashore on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula near the resort town of Tulum as a Category 2 storm early Friday, whipping trees and knocking out power after leaving a trail of destruction and at least 11 dead across the Caribbean region.
Beryl was expected to rapidly weaken to a tropical storm as it crosses over the peninsula before it re-emerging into the Gulf of Mexico and likely regaining hurricane strength, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Once in the warm waters of the Gulf, Beryl is forecast to head toward northern Mexico near the Texas border, an area that already was soaked by Tropical Storm Alberto just a couple of weeks ago.
Beryl spread destruction in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Barbados in recent days and on Tuesday became the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. Three people have been reported dead in Grenada, three in St. Vincent and the Grenadine, three in Venezuela and two in Jamaica, officials said.
After landfall in Mexico on Friday, Beryl’s maximum windspeeds had decreased to 100 mph (160 kph), but Tulum would continue to see “large and destructive waves,” the hurricane center said. The area would face heavy rainfall and potential flooding in the coming hours, according to forecasts from Mexico’s National Water Commission.
Mexican authorities had moved some tourists and residents out of low-lying areas around the Yucatan peninsula prior to landfall, but tens of thousands remained to tough out the strong winds and expected storm surge. Much of the area around Tulum is just a few yards (meters) above sea level.
The city was plunged into darkness when the storm knocked out power as it came ashore. Screeching winds set off car alarms across the town. Wind and rain continued to whip the seaside city and surrounding areas on Friday morning.
No deaths or wounded had been reported as of Friday morning, but 40% of the Tulum's electricity continued to be down, said Laura Velázquez, national coordinator of Mexican Civil Protection.
“Don't go out yet, wait until the hurricane completely passes,” said Velázquez, speaking on a video in a morning press briefing.
Once a sleepy, laid-back village, in recent years Tulum has boomed with unrestrained development and now has about 50,000 permanent inhabitants and at least as many tourists on an average day. The resort now has its own international airport.
The storm's center early Friday was about 15 miles (25 kilometers) north-northwest of Tulum and was moving west-northwest at 15 mph (about 24 kph), the hurricane center said.
As the storm approached, official had set up shelters in schools and hotels. As the wind began gusting over Tulum's beaches Thursday, officials on four-wheelers with megaphones rolled along the sand telling people to leave and authorities shut down and evacuated beachside hotels. S ea turtle eggs were even moved off beaches threatened by storm surge.
Tourists also took precautions. Lara Marsters, 54, a therapist visiting Tulum from Boise, Idaho, said had filled up empty water bottles from the tap. “We’re going to hunker down and stay safe," she said.
Earlier in the week, the hurricane damaged or destroyed 95% of homes on a pair of islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, jumbled fishing boats in Barbados and ripped off roofs and knocked out electricity in Jamaica.
On Union Island, part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a man who identified himself as Captain Baga described the storm’s impact, including how he had filled two 2,000-gallon rubber water tanks in preparation.
“I strapped them down securely on six sides; and I watched the wind lift those tanks and take them away -- filled with water,” he said Thursday. “I’m a sailor and I never believed wind could do what I saw it do, if anyone (had) ever told me wind could do that, I would have told them they lie!”
The island was littered with debris from homes that looked like they had exploded.
Girlyn Williams and Jeremiah Forde were trying to recover what they could Thursday around their home, where only a concrete foundation remained standing.
They had run from room to room during the storm as different sections of their house were being destroyed. Eventually, they hid in a small space created by a rubber water tank that got wedged between the house and a concrete tank. Williams cut her leg in the scramble and needed six stitches.
Myers reported from Kingston, Jamaica. Associated Press writers Renloy Trail in Kingston, Jamaica; Mark Stevenson, María Verza and Mariana Martínez Barba in Mexico City; Coral Murphy Marcos in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Lucanus Ollivierre on Union Island, St. Vincent and Grenadines, contributed to this report.
A man inspects a home destroyed by Hurricane Beryl in Clifton, Union Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Lucanus Ollivierre)
A man looks out of the window of his home, which was destroyed by Hurricane Beryl in Clifton, Union Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Lucanus Ollivierre)
Workers remove trees branches felled by Hurricane Beryl in Kingston, Jamaica, Thursday, July 4, 2024. What had been the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic, weakened to a Category 3 by early Thursday but remained a major hurricane taking aim at Mexico’s Caribbean coast. (AP Photo/Collin Reid)
An employee places sandbags along a hotel path as protection from high waters in anticipation of Hurricane Beryl's arrival, in Tulum, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
Employees board up windows of a hotel as protection in anticipation of Hurricane Beryl's arrival, in Tulum, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
Tourists lounge on a beach ahead of Hurricane Beryl's expected arrival, in Tulum, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
A man bails water out of his boat in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, in Kingston, Jamaica, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Hudson)
A tree felled by Hurricane Beryl blocks a street in Kingston, Jamaica, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Hudson)
Cars drive under a leaning utility pole in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl in Kingston, Jamaica, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Hudson)
Soldiers on patrol ride past a leaning utility pole in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl in Kingston, Jamaica, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Hudson)
A tree felled by Hurricane Beryl blocks a street in Kingston, Jamaica, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Hudson)
A worker secures a dinosaur statue at a theme park ahead of Hurricane Beryl's expected arrival in Chicxulub, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)
An aerial view of a home damaged by Hurricane Beryl in Kingston, Jamaica, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Hudson)
A boat damaged by Hurricane Beryl lays on its side at a dock in Kingston, Jamaica, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Hudson)
Boats lie on land for protection in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Beryl in Progreso, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)
A man stands next to a business destroyed by Hurricane Beryl in Clifton, Union Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Lucanus Ollivierre)
Soldiers ask a tourist to evacuate Mirador beach ahead of Hurricane Beryl's expected arrival in Tulum, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
A man removes debris from his home, which was destroyed by Hurricane Beryl in Clifton, Union Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Lucanus Ollivierre)
People walk past a souvenir shop's storefront boarded up preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Beryl, in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
Homes destroyed by Hurricane Beryl lie in Clifton, Union Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Lucanus Ollivierre)
A man takes a video from the rocky shore of Mirador beach ahead of Hurricane Beryl's expected arrival, in Tulum, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
People relocate a boat for its protection ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Beryl in Progreso, Mexico, Thursday, July 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Martin Zetina)
