Poetry

This chapter provides an introduction to and overview of the poetry of Charles Brockden Brown. It situates poetry writing within Brown’s biography, including his early childhood and education at Friends Latin School, and then tracks how the circulation of poetry in manuscript formed the basis for his most important personal relationships in the 1790s and 1800s. It also demonstrates how writing and publishing poetry in the major periodicals of Philadelphia and New York facilitated Brown’s entry into the magazine culture of the Federalist period. The chapter discusses examples of Brown’s childhood verse, his epistolary poems, his pseudonymous newspaper poetry, and the poems he published in magazines during the last decade of his life. Overall, the chapter argues that Brown’s poetry offers a different perspective on the development of his career, while at the same time showing how the rich literary culture of the early republic could be both local and transatlantic.