SOURCE: Ellis, Milton. “The Author of the First American Novel.” American Literature (1933): 359-68.

In the following essay, Ellis contends that The Power of Sympathy was written by William Hill Brown, and not Sarah Morton.

In a recently published study¹ the present writer has shown, apparently to the satisfaction of those best qualified to judge, that The Power of Sympathy, the first serious attempt at novel writing produced by an American and published in the United States, was not written by the poetess Mrs. Sarah (Apthorp) Morton.² The purpose of this paper is to consider further the claims of the only other known candidate for the doubtful honor of authorship, the minor Bostonian poet, essayist, dramatist, and fiction writer of the early 1790's, William Hill Brown.³

By way of preliminary information, The Power of Sympathy was first published, anonymously, in two small volumes, at Boston in January, 1789, by Isaiah...