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Fiction: The First American Novel

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From: American Eras
Date: 19970101
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Fiction: The First American Novel

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Background. During the 1780s Americans developed a growing interest in the relatively new literary form of the novel, reading books by British novelists such as Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, and Henry Fielding, as well as European authors. One particular favorite was German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ’ s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), the story of a sensitive, alienated young romantic who commits suicide. The novel became especially popular after an American edition was published in Philadelphia in 1784. Yet despite ...

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