SOURCE: Young, Philip. “‘First American Novel’: The Power of Sympathy, in Place.” College Literature 11, no. 2 (spring 1984): 115-24.

In the following essay, Young focuses on the theme of incest in The Power of Sympathy, linking it to European literary tradition and also noting the novel's influence on subsequent American letters.

It is a coincidence of uncertain import that the American Novel got off to its shaky start in the same year, 1789, as the American Republic. The odd thing about that date for the novel is that the local premiere was such a late opening. Several giants of the English novel had finished their work by then; indeed it was announced the very next year in London that the novel was a “worn out species of composition” (Monthly Review, August, 1790, p. 463), all materials for it having been used up. 1789 is especially late in view of the fact that an appetite...