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Censure of Fiction in American Romances and Magazines 1789–1810

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

G. Harrison Orians
G. Harrison Orians*
Affiliation:
University of Toledo
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Extract

Most critics of early American literature have testified to the widespread censure of fiction in the last years of the eighteenth century. The attacks, occasionally dignified by book or magazine publication, were, as Carl Van Doren has pointed out, fanlike in their spread: The dullest critics contended that novels were lies; the pious that they served no virtuous purpose; the strenuous, that they softened sturdy minds; the utilitarian, that they crowded out more useful books; the realistic, that they painted adventure too romantic and love too vehement; the patriotic, that dealing with European manners, they tended to confuse and dissatisfy republican youth.

      The dullest critics contended that novels were lies; the pious that they served no virtuous purpose; the strenuous, that they softened sturdy minds; the utilitarian, that they crowded out more useful books; the realistic, that they painted adventure too romantic and love too vehement; the patriotic, that dealing with European manners, they tended to confuse and dissatisfy republican youth.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1937 , pp. 195 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

page 195 note 1 The American Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1921), p. 3.

page 195 note 2 The Early American Novel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1907), Chap. i, 25–28.

page 195 note 3 See Anghoff, A Literary History of the American People (New York: Knopf, 1931), ii, 315; F. L. Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741–1850 (New York, 1930), p. 42; Fred Lewis Pattee, The First Century of American Literature, 1770–1870 (N. Y.: D. Appleton-Century Company), Chap. vi, 81–95.

page 195 note 4 See Dr. Sereno Edwards Dwight (Editor), The Works of President Edwards, with a Memoir of His Life (New York, 1829), iv, 288.

page 196 note 5 Nathaniel Appleton Haven inveighed against the novel in a letter of 1812 on the grounds of mis-improving time and forming bad mental habits in accustoming the mind to “receive ideas without exertion.” See George Ticknor, The Remains of Nathaniel Appleton Haven, With a Memoir of His Life (1827), p. 279. Timothy Dwight is most frequently quoted in comments on opposition to novels. (See Loshe, op. cit., p. 1.) Dwight was very specific in his charges: “When the utmost labour of boys is bounded by history, biography and the pamphlets of the day, girls sink down to songs, novels and plays.

“Of this reading what, let me ask, are the consequences? By the first novel which she reads, she is introduced into a world, literally new; a middle region between ‘this spot which men call earth,‘ and that which is formed in Arabian tales. Instead of houses, inhabited by mere men, women, and children, she is presented with a succession of splendid palaces, and gloomy castles inhabited by tenants, half human and half angelic, or haunted by downright fiends.”

“Her plight in consequence of this descent is sad. After a succession of tales to which her misguided zeal leads her, she loses contact with reality; the world becomes to her a ‘solitude and its inhabitants strangers, because her taste for living has become too refined, too dainty, to relish anything found in real life.‘” (Travels In New England and New York [New Haven, 1821], Letter XLVIII, Vol. i, pp. 515–517).

The writing of Dwight's volume was begun in September, 1796, in which month he made a trip through New England, but he elaborated his notes, completing the first volume, from which quotation was made, about 1805. For his comments in 1807 see G. P. Schmidt, The Old Time College President (N.Y.: Col. U. Press, 1930), p. 194.

page 196 note 6 North American Review, xvii, 383 (Oct. 1823).

page 196 note 7 xvi, p. 495.

page 196 note 8 The New York Literary Gazette, i, 1 (Sept. 1, 1834).

page 196 note 9 iv, 373.

page 197 note 10 ii, 1 (July, 1824). See also The American Monthly Magazine, i, 97 (March, 1833) and Putnam's Magazine, iv, 392 (October, 1854). The Christian Spectator (iv, 562 (November 1, 1822)) commented:

“Till lately, it was well settled, in most pious families, what books were, and what books were not admissible. Fiction in nearly all its forms was prohibited, not merely on account of its moral blemishes and unreal pictures of human life, but as tending in its very nature to enervate the youthful mind, and give it a disrelish for substantial and profitable reading.”

page 197 note 11 Mott, op. cit., 63, 64.

page 198 note 12 iii, 662 (November, 1791).

page 198 note 13 i, 296.

page 198 note 14 i, 264.

page 198 note 15 xii, 283 (November, 1792).

page 198 note 16 vi, 225 (October, 1792).

page 198 note 17 See Loshe, op. cit., p. 3.

page 198 note 18 In that stormy decade a great many liberal ideas were propagated. “In large universities an increasing unruliness and surprising irreverence for religious exercises manifested itself”; and this movement was marked in other than academic circles. See Bernard Fäy, The Revolutionary Spirit in France and America (New York, 1931), p. 452.

page 198 note 19 i, 224 (September 15, 1796).

page 199 note 20 Issue for March 10, 1798. The author goes on to say:

“Novels not only pollute the imaginations of young women, but likewise give them false ideas of life, which too often make them act improperly; owing to the romantic turn of thinking they imbibe from their favorite studies. They read of characters which never existed, and never can exist: and when all the wit and invention of a luxuriant fancy are stretched to paint a young man all perfection in body and mind, it is hardly possible for a girl to avoid falling in love with the phantom, and being out of humour with the piece of plain mortality which she afterwards marries, and finds, to her great disappointment and mortification, does not act like the image her fondness had dressed up to her view.”

The retort of novel defenders that there are many “good sentiments dispersed in them” he answers in the following manner:

“I maintain, that good sentiments being found scattered in loose novels, render them the more dangerous, since, when they are mixed with seducing arguments, it requires more discernment than is to be found in youth to separate the evil from the good; they are so nicely blended; and when a young lady finds principles of religion and virtue inculcated in a book, she is naturally thrown off her guard by taking it for granted that such a work can contain no harm; and of course the evil steals imperceptibly into her heart, while she thinks she is reading sterling morality.”

page 199 note 21 Inscribed on the fly-leaf of a copy of John Wood's Mentor, or the American Teacher's Assistant (New York, 1795), 374 pp. 12. mo.

page 199 note 22 i, 4 (January 17, 1801).

page 199 note 23 i, 47 (February 21, 1801).

page 199 note 24 The Lady's Monitor, another of the ladies' magazines, made clear its moral basis: “Pieces of a moral tendency, whatever can amend and humanize the heart, inform the understanding, and correct the judgment; whatever can awaken attention to obvious and important truths, will always be preferred.” (Vol. i, No. 20 [Jan. 2, 1801].)

page 200 note 25 i, 173.

page 200 note 26 It is not clear who was intended by “H—.” It may have been Thomas Holcraft, author of Alwyn, Anna St. Ives, and Hugh Trevor. More likely the reference was to Mary Hays, author of Memoirs of Emma Courtney, Letters and Essays, and The Victim of Prejudice.

page 200 note 27 Portfolio, ii, 107 (April 3, 1802). For additional direct objections to fiction in the mid-decade turn to The Portfolio, iii, 231 (1807).

page 200 note 28 Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (New York: T. & J. Swords, 1803), ii, 173–176.

page 201 note 29 iv, 205 (October, 1808).

page 201 note 30 Ibid., iv, 208.

page 201 note 31 i, 363 (June, 1804).—The Literary Miscellany (Cambridge, 1805), also reviewed the book, but the notice was too abridged in treatment for extended examination of any chapter. What its point of view might have been may be gathered from an article in Number II, “written in the summer of 1800,” in which it was declared that the “flood of fiction from authors, the intemperate appetite in readers, which has swallowed the whole, good and bad, are poor commendations of the taste of the age.” (i, 117.)

page 201 note 32 i, 403 (March, 1804).

page 201 note 33 Portfolio, Series iii, i, 388.

page 202 note 34 Ibid., iv, 85.

page 202 note 35 Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor, iii, 87.

page 202 note 36 Tyler, op. cit., Preface.

page 202 note 37 iii, 663 (November, 1791).

page 202 note 38 See Dennie's attack on Mrs. Radcliffe in the Portfolio, iii, 217 (July 9, 1803); iii, 226 (July 15, 1803); iii, 233 (July 22, 1803); iii, 399 (Dec. 10, 1803). But he admitted that “to her genuine beauties we must willingly swell the note of praise,” which he does in iii, 241 (July 29, 1803), and in iii, 249 (August 6, 1803). See also The Monthly Register, ii, 277 (March, 1807).

page 203 note 39 Boston, 1805.

page 203 note 40 From Loshe, The Early American Novel (N.Y., 1907) p. 41, I transcribe the following note:

“The order of the Illuminati was established in Bavaria, in 1775, by Weishaupt, a professor of Canon Law at Ingostadt, and in 1780 was suppressed by the Elector. It is said, however, to have secretly continued its organization, to have had representatives all over Europe and to have had an active part in the French Revolution. At the time at which Brown wrote, the Illuminati, their wide aims, their evil methods, and their mysterious power, were a widespread cause of discussion.” A good contemporary account of the order can be found in a book by John Robison, Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with the ponderous title, Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.

page 203 note 41 Providence, 1793.

page 203 note 42 Newburyport, n.d.; Vergennes, Vt., 1814.

page 204 note 43 Infidelity, (Philadelphia, 1797). See also Hannah Foster: The Boarding School (Boston, 1798). The author warned young ladies against excessive novel reading and “immoral books of fiction, obscene conversation, immodest play and cards.” Henry Sherburne, in The Oriental Philanthropist (Portsmouth: William Treadwell, 1800), remarked: “The Author hath attempted under the guise of amusement to instil those active principles of piety, virtue and benevolence, which never fail of insuring, to all who are influenced by them, the real and the most exquisite enjoyment of life;—those principles which are the only and sure foundation of civil, social and domestic felicity.” p. 7. George Watterston in the Preface to The Lawyer (Pittsburgh, 1808) remarked: The following sheets were written chiefly with a view to exhibit the pernicious effects which result from a vicious education, and thus to show the propriety of early instilling into the youthful mind principles of justice, of truth, and of honesty.“ To Glencarn (Alexandria, 1810) he prefaced these remarks: ”If I have rendered the following tale a vehicle of instruction and amusement; If I have contributed to the moral improvement or mental gratification of a single individual, I shall deem myself amply remunerated for the toil of writing, and the labor of composition.“

page 204 note 44 Letter xi.

page 205 note 45 ii, 186.

page 205 note 46 i, 57. One Mr. Ashley declared: “The Sorrows of Werter is now open upon my table. It animates my heart; it cheers my soul.” Disesteem for this work was expressed in the preface to Chauncey Lee's The Trial of Virtue (Hartford, 1806), as follows: “Should the attention of our youth generally be diverted from the sorrows of Werther to the Sorrows of Job, it is confidently believed that they would realize a subject of more rational entertainment, a source of more solid and useful instruction, and the example of a character more worthy of their esteem and imitation.”

page 205 note 47 Boston Weekly Magazine, i, 136 (June 11, 1803).

page 205 note 48 “Men and Women: A Moral Tale” by The Wanderer. See Volume ii, passim.

page 206 note 49 iii, 276 (April, 1807). Note also Alicia LeFanu who, in Lucy Osmond, A Story (New York, 1804), endeavored “to exemplify the danger attending the early study of works of mere imagination” by an instructive account of Lucy Osmond who listened too attentively to the “delusive voices of fancy.” This work, however, despite the Wegelin entry, was probably British in origin. See the English Catalogue (1801–1836) where appears the title Lucy Osmond, a Story, by Lefanu (A), 1805. It is probable that the entry of Lucy Ormond, a Story, in The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure … (London, 1803), cxiii, 78, was the same title with the “s” carelessly transcribed as an “r.” Judicious doubts about fiction were voiced by an American Lady (probably Mrs. Martha Read of Philadelphia) in the Preface of Monima, or the Beggar Girl (New York, 1803):

“To exhibit mankind in their true colours … to unfold the pernicious tendency of ignorance, prejudices, and immorality, is the indisputed privilege of the Novel-writer; this, however, cannot be done but by a strict adherence to truth and nature; to deviate from this, the mind must become enveloped in mystery and darkness. Those among the honorable tribe of Novel-Tinkers, who arrogate to themselves the right of infringing on the limits of nature, by conjuring up scenes, images, and actions which nature cannot boast, are, let their works be ever so well worded, weak, puerile, and even condemnable; such writings answer no valuable purposes to the enlightened citizen, … they ingraft unwholesome prejudices; nevertheless these writers have been applauded by men whose judgment dare not be called in question. …”

page 207 note 50 Tabitha Tenney, Female Quixotism (Newburyport, 1808), p. 211.

page 207 note 51 Preface, The Gamesters (Boston, 1805).

page 207 note 52 Portfolio, ii, 183; 186 (June 19, 1802). For other favorable references to Richardson see: “Letters to a Young Lady,” by Rev. John Bennet, American Museum, xii, 135 (Sept., 1792); “Comparison between the writings of Richardson and Fielding,” American Museum, x, 103 (August, 1791); American Museum, x, 276 ff. (December, 1791). On page 278 there is a key passage: “To read novels frequently and indiscriminately is a most pernicious habit. There are no means so effectual of rendering them distasteful, as an early familiarity with the effusions of Richardson's genius.” See also The Literary Magazine, iv, 7, 8.

page 208 note 53 Portfolio, ii, 142 (May 8, 1802).

page 208 note 54 Ibid., ii, 107 (April 3, 1802).

page 208 note 55 (May 21, 1796), p. 2, col. 2. See also Portfolio, ii, 169 (June 5, 1802).

page 208 note 56 (February, 1795), p. 172. See also (May, 1795), p. 88.

page 209 note 57 Portfolio, ii, 169 (June 5, 1802). Signed J.D. See also ii, 186 (June 19, 1802).

page 209 note 58 For additional defense of novels consult Explanatory Catalogue of H. Caritat's Circulating Library (New York, n.d.—but cir. 1802) which contains in addition to excerpts from reviews a ten page section on “A General Defense of Modern Novels.” Cited in Leroy Kimball's “An Account of Hocquet Caritat” in The Colophon, Part 18. See also the Preface to George Watterston's Glencarn (Alexandria, 1810).

page 209 note 59 The Poetical Works of John Trumbull (Hartford 1802), ii, 44. This reference, it is true, refers to the follies of the fop; but see ii, 76 for the excesses of the coquettes who devote themselves to novels, plays, and romances which poison their minds. (Progress of Dullness, be it noted, was written in 1772).

page 209 note 60 The New York Weekly Museum, Vol. xviii, advertised for sale at the bookstore of John Harrison (Feb. 16, 1805), a long series which included the following: Grasville Abbey, Jack Smith, Mordaunt, Emily De Vermont, Emma Courtney, What Has Been, Gonsalvo, The Abbess, St. Leon, Dorval, Three Spaniards, Father and Daughter, Caroline of Litchfield, Clermont, Romance of the Forest, Zaida, Tale of the Times, Monima or the Beggar Girl, The Beggar Boy, Vicar of Lansdown, Ildegert, Amelia, Stella.

Such lists not infrequently ran to 115. Their value varies greatly as the items listed reappear in subsequent issues or serve as single notices, which was rarely the case.

page 209 note 61 Loshe, op. cit., p. 26.

page 209 note 62 i, 301 (May, 1800).

page 209 note 63 ii, 142. The author spoke of circulating volumes as “sought out with such avidity and run through with such delight by all those (a considerable part of my fellow-citizens), who cannot resist the impulse of curiosity, or withstand the allurements of a title page.” (May 8, 1802.)

page 210 note 64 i, 47 (February 21, 1801).

page 210 note 65 Miller, op. cit., ii, 176.

page 210 note 66 i, 75 (Dec. 21, 1805).

page 210 note 67 For further evidence of indulgence note the remarks of Samuel P. Jarvis in the 1806 Phi Beta Kappa address at Yale: “The taste for novels and all other kinds of light reading has arisen to an astounding and alarming height. Like the lean kines of Pharaoh, they have swallowed up all other reading, and like them too, they have not looked the better for it. The evil consequences attendant upon novel reading are much greater than has generally been imagined.” See also Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor, iii, 86: “Some who now live, and are not old, must remember the time when the number of novels being so few that they were quickly exhausted, history, excellent poetry, and the lighter ethics afforded the customary relaxation to our females in their leisure hours; and the window seat, where now the worthless novel holds an undisputed throne, was covered with those admirable works, the Spectator, the Tatler, the Guardian, and others not less laudable.”

page 211 note 68 The South was fairly liberal in its reading matter. “Let them be,” said Parson Weems, biographer and bookseller, as he ordered his stock, “of the gay and sprightly kind, Novels, decent plays, elegant Histories, etc. Let the Moral & Religious be as highly dulcified as possible.” So spoke the colporteur who made his way through the South. A bookseller from Charleston remarked in 1801: “Mr Carey will be so obliging as to send as many of the Novels as he can procure; it will be mutually our interest to keep a good collection, as the good folks here love light reading. (E. L. Bradsher's Mathew Carey, p. 31.)

page 212 note 69 There were, of course, some men readers of fiction. Bored, indeed, by the trash of the circulating libraries, they sometimes yawned “over the delicate distresses of Damon and Delia” (Portfolio, ii, 165). As for genuine literary consumption we may consult the shop of Colon and Spondee: “I do not always, especially in my vacant hours, neglect a novel, merely because I am told by a dull searcher for matters of fact, that it is not legitimate history. Of the ordinary trash of a circulating library my friends will easily acquit me of the suspicion of being studious. But I have read, even for the tenth time, the pages of Fielding, the Quixote of Cervantes, and the Cripple Devil of Le Sage, as well as the record of Mary's sufferings, and an Elizabeth's glory, by Robertson and Hume. I have seen real life, and found pregnant instruction in the Roderick Random of Smollett and the Cecilia of Miss Burney, and the ‘Tale of the Times’ by Mrs. West. If I pick up a volume, elegantly written, sparkling with wit, true to nature, and a copy from life, what does it import me whether it was composed from monkish annals, preserved in the Library of the 'Faculty of Advocates,' or from hints in an Addison's pocket-book. A good story is the same, let it issue from 'knightly castles, or from ladies' bowers'.” (Portfolio, ii, 138 [May 8, 1802].) See also Tabitha Tenney, op. cit., p. 7.

page 213 note 70 John Davis opened his Wanderings of William with a dedication to Flavira, as follows: “Avail yourself of the moment that offers to indulge in the perusal of this book. Take it, read it, there is nothing to fear. Your Governness is gone out, and your Mamma is not yet risen.”

page 213 note 71 John Davis, Travels of Four Years and a Half in the United States of America during 1798, 1799, 1800, 1801, and 1802 (London, 1803), p. 204 n. Speaking of the novels in Caritat's Library Davis remarked: “Its shelves could scarcely sustain the weight of Female Frailty, The Posthumous Daughter, and the Cavern of Woe; they required the aid of the carpenter to support the burden of Cottage on the Moor, the House of Tynian, and the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne or they groaned under the multiplied editions of the Devil in Love, More Ghosts, and Rinaldo Rinaldini.”

page 213 note 72 The American Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal (Feb., 1795), p. 172.

page 213 note 73 In announcing the volume publication of Sincerity, the publishers Gilbert and Dean wrote of novels: “That by far the greater part of this species of fictitious history, now in circulation, is injurious to the manners, and subversive of the morals of youth, is a truth, which many lament, and which none will deny. But the pleasure with which they are read, and the eagerness with which they are sought after, will ever baffle the most sedulous attempts of parents and instructors, to keep them out of the hands of those, who are placed under their care. The best, and indeed the only remedy for this growing evil, is, the introduction of publications, of the novel class, which are unexceptionable in their moral tendency, and calculated to impress, on the young and tender mind, sentiments of honor, of virtue, and of religion; to represent things as they are, not as the wild imagination paints them. …” (The Boston Weekly Magazine, ii, 136 [June 16, 1804].)