Amelia; or the Faithless Briton. Boston: Spotswood and Wayne, 1798.
Highfill, Phillip H. “The Columbian Magazine.” University of Rochester Library Bulletin.Spring 1952. 2 (3). Phillip Highfill’s article describes the history of the Columbian magazine. He details the history and tells the story of Carey and Cist who began the magazine. Highfill is able to characterize the political importance of the magazine in an exciting time in American history, describing it as “not a revolutionary…but [having] a revolutionary air” (4).
The discussion of this revolutionary air is very important to my research. Since Amelia was published in it, the “revolutionary air” is something that it certainly contributes to.
Lewis, Jan. "The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic." The William and Mary Quarterly 44.4 (1987): 689-721. Jan Lewis draws connections between the literature of the early Republic and their reflection on political though and the “intimate connections between family and polity in eighteenth-century thought” (691). She argues that “eighteenth century thought… placed the family and the state on the same continuum, that of society” and that literature “could dramatize issues of authority in terms of relationships between members of a family” (693)
This is crucial to my argument about Amelia. We get a relatively prosperous American family who minds their own business, and not until the British officer comes into play do things cause trouble. This almost works as a microcosm of the Revolution in itself; Amelia is almost a casualty of the war and Honorius and Horatio achieve their sovereignty through her sacrifice.
Martin, Terrence. “Social Institutions in the Early American Novel.” American Quarterly. 9 (1). Spring 1957. 72-82. Terrence Martin’s article examines the way the different forms of early American novels reflect the social patterns at the time. He examines the roles of the historical novel, the seduction novel, and sentimental fiction. Each, Martin argues, reflects a certain aspect of post- Revolutionary life with the writers using each genre to make a statement. Martin argues specifically that the use of foreign seducers in the seduction genre help to set up a dichotomy between the Americans and British, and this is essentially what I am arguing.
