Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker

This is now the edition of choice for those of us who teach Brown's fascinating Edgar Huntly. Barnard and Shapiro explore the relevant historical, cultural, and literary backgrounds in their illuminating Introduction; they skillfully annotate the text; they provide useful and up-to-date bibliographies; and they append a number of revealing primary texts for further cultural contextualization. This edition will help to stimulate new thinking about race, empire, and sexuality in Brown's prescient novel of the American frontier. --Robert S. Levine, University of Maryland

The striking painting by a French artist on the cover of this American novel signals the editors' refreshing approach to Edgar Huntly through trans-Atlantic discourses of empire, radical-democratic social theory, sensibility, and sexuality. . . .This edition provides students with the tools to contextualize and analyze Edgar Huntly, including an extensive bibliography of relevant scholarship and footnotes that define unfamiliar words, give historical background, or refer the reader back to the introduction. Barnard and Shapiro's selection of related texts from works including William Godwin's Political Justice and Brown's essays gives students insight on Edgar Huntly's sources. --Yvette Piggush, Journal of the Early Republic