During his lifetime, Hugh Henry Brackenridge worked as a schoolteacher, an army chaplain, an editor, a politician, a lawyer, and a judge; and he wrote verse, drama, essays, and prose fiction, achieving widest literary fame for his only novel, Modern Chivalry , published in two parts and a number of volumes from 1792 to 1805, and in two completely revised editions in 1815 and 1819. In many ways a reflection of Brackenridge's lifelong interest in the new democracy, the novel is lengthy and often cumbersome, replete with many essaylike sections which are heavily allusive, digressive, and rambling. But the main pulse of Modern Chivalry, the picaresque journey of Captain John Farrago and his bog-trotter servant Teague O'Regan, both entertains and informs. It is against the backdrop of this journey that Brackenridge targets the humorous attack on the excesses of democracy for which he is celebrated.

Hugh Henry Brackenridge was born in Kintyre, Scotland...