Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of January 21st.
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It is the 21st day of the year, leaving 344 days remaining in 2022.
It was sold as a cautionary tale against the "fatal consequences of seductions (and) to inspire the female mind with a principle of self complacency." Hrrmph.
The novel told a sordid tale of love, incest, death, and suicide. Using the epistolary style -- a series of letters -- it told a tale about a Thomas Harrington, who falls in love with a woman named Harriot Fawcet, and they engage to wed. But his father objects, letting them know for the first time they are brother and sister. Harriot falls ill before the wedding, and dies. Depressed, Thomas whinges a lot before taking his own life.
The author was surprisingly anonymous in that first printing, by Isaiah Thomas and Company, and remained so for some 105 years. Originally, the author was thought to be Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, a contemporary poet whose family scandal a few years earlier was thought to mirror the novel. Also, Morton's poetry was popular and widely acclaimed.
Power of Sympathy neither sold widely nor was acclaimed widely. History tells us the actual writer was William Hill Brown -- an uncle of the poet -- and it was his debut novel.
Two hundred and twenty six years later, a saucy review in The Paris Review said "you won't find it on many (any?) short lists for the Great American Novel. To speak with the kind of prudence it so sternly advocates: the passing centuries have hidden its charms."
Brown wrote a second novel dealing with incestuous love -- Ira and Isabelle, which was published posthumously in 1807.
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