SOURCE: Walser, Richard. “Boston's Reception of the First American Novel.” Early American Literature 17, no. 1 (spring 1982): 65-72.

In the following essay, Walser describes the New England atmosphere in which The Power of Sympathy was published, concluding that the sale of the novel was not suppressed, as has been argued by some scholars.

In Boston on Friday, January 16, 1789, the semiweekly Herald of Freedom carried this provocative item:

An American Novel

We learn that there is now in the Press in this town a Novel, dedicated to the young ladies, which is intended to enforce attention to female education, and to represent the fatal consequences of Seduction. We are informed that one of the incidents upon which the Novel is founded, is drawn from a late unhappy suicide. We shall probably soon be enabled to lay before our readers some account of so truly Novel a work, upon such interesting subjects...