The Power of Sympathy and The Coquette

by William Hill Brown and Hannah Webster Foster

Book Overview

Written in epistolary form and drawn from actual events, Brown's The Power of Sympathy (1789) and Foster's The Coquette (1797) were two of the earliest novels published in the United States. Both novels reflect the eighteenth-century preoccupation with the role of women as safekeepers of the young country's morality.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140434682
• ISBN13: 9780140434682
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Great novel

Thank you for the quick shipment! The novel is in great condition and will be a nice edition to my library.

O Times, O Customs

An excellent book. I was really only interested in The Power of Sympathy because of its billing as the first American novel. I had never heard of "The Coquette," a separate novel included in the Penguin Classic version. It turned out that The Coquette was the far more interesting of the two...much better writing and much better insight into the thinking of the times on the subjects of the role of women in the new United States and of the existence and the consequences of seduction. The actions of women have changed immeasurably since that time but the thinking remains remarkably the same.