From the years immediately after America gained its independence from England until long after, America's literati called for a literature that would reflect well on the artistic capacities of the new nation, a literature that could earn the respect of England even as it treated indigenous themes. In Charles Brockden Brown, a handful of critics on both sides of the Atlantic found a writer who appeared to meet these requirements. While many scholars have tended to see Brown as a derivative writer, one who drew heavily on the political ideas of William Godwin and on the Gothic tradition in literature, those contemporaries of his who admired him saw in his works the beginning of an original American literature of which the new country could be proud. For some Brown's appeal lay in his depictions of American scenes, whether in writings about plagues in Philadelphia or in those about...