Wieland

Called a "remarkable story" by John Greenleaf Whittier and described by John Keats as "very powerful,"Wieland, Charles Brockden Brown's disturbing 1798 tale of terror, is a masterpiece involving spontaneous combustion, disembodied voices, religious mania, and a gruesome murder based on a real-life incident. This Modern Library Paperback Classic includesWieland's fragmentary sequel,Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, as well as several other important but hard-to-find Brockden Brown short stories, including "Thessalonica," "Walstein's School of History," and "Death of Cicero." This collection also reproduces the newspaper account of the murder that inspiredWieland.

<b>Caleb Crain</b> is the author of <i>American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation</i>. He lives in Brooklyn.