What is the first US Novel ?

You pose an excellent and interesting question. I enjoy coming to forums such as this and being stimulated with new ideas.

Here are two excerpts from a very informative URL which I found using the google.com search engine.

http://encarta.msn.com/text_76156484...ure_Prose.html

For its first 200 years American prose reflected the settlement and growth of the American colonies, largely through histories, religious writings, and expedition and travel narratives. Biography also played an important role, especially in America’s search for native heroes. Fiction appeared only after the colonies gained independence, when the clamor for a uniquely American literature brought forth novels based on events in America’s past.

American fiction became formally established only after the American Revolution. The Power of Sympathy (1789), a tragic love story by William Hill Brown, is generally considered the first American novel. Charles Brockden Brown is among the best-remembered novelists of the period. His Wieland; or, The Transformation (1798) is a cleverly plotted horror story that emphasizes dark, supernatural visions. Other notable novels of the time include Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple (1791), a tragic romance that involves a young woman’s journey from England to the colonies during the Revolution; Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants (1793), the story of an English family whose life improves in America; and Hannah Foster's The Coquette (1797), a novel in the form of letters.

http://www.uwm.edu/~abd/243.html

Did you know that the first American novel to sell a million copies and the novel often regarded as “the most important American novel ever written” were both composed by women? These authors, Susan Warner (The Wide, Wide World) and Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) were just two of the many women in the 19th century to pursue successful literary careers.