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Logan (novel)

Logan, a Family History is a Gothic novel of historical fiction by American writer John Neal. Published anonymously in Baltimore in 1822, the book is inspired by the true story of Mingo leader Logan the Orator, but weaves a highly fictionalized story of interactions between Anglo-American colonists and Indigenous peoples on the western frontier of colonial Virginia. Set just before the Revolutionary War, it depicts the genocide of Native Americans as the heart of the American story and follows a long cast of characters connected to each other in a complex web of overlapping love interests, family relations, rape, and (sometimes incestuous) sexual activity.

Logan, a Family History
Title page of the first edition, volume 1
AuthorJohn Neal
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreGothic, historical
Set inColony of Virginia
PublisherH. C. Carey & I. Lea
Publication date
1822
Media typePrint
Pages658 (first edition)
OCLC12207199
LC ClassPZ3 .N2521

Logan was Neal's second novel, but his first notable success, attracting generally favorable reviews in both the US and UK. He wrote the story over a six-to-eight-week stretch at a time when he was producing more novels and juggling more responsibilities than any other period of his life. Likely a commercial failure for the publisher, who refused to work with Neal in the future, the book nevertheless saw three printings in the UK. Scholars criticize the story's profound excessiveness and incoherence, but praise its pioneering and successful experimentation with psychological horror, verisimilitude, sexual guilt in male characters, impacts of intergenerational violence, and documentation of interracial relationships and intersections between sex and violence on the American frontier.

These experimentations influenced later American writers and foreshadowed fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Edgar Allan Poe. The novel is considered important by scholars studying the roles of Gothic literature and Indigenous identities in fashioning an American national identity. It advanced the American literary nationalist goal of developing a new native literature by experimenting with natural diction, distinctly American characters, regional American colloquialism, and fiercely independent rhetoric. It is considered unique amongst contemporary fiction for the preponderance of sexually explicit content and gratuitous violence.

Plot

 
Logan in the aftermath of the Yellow Creek massacre

The story begins in the colony of Virginia in 1774. Mingo chief Logan enters the chamber of the governor of Virginia and overpowers him. The governor is saved by Harold, a young man of mixed English and Indigenous descent who lives among the Mingo. Harold impregnates the half-asleep governor's wife Elvira, who is infatuated with Logan and finds Harold similarly attractive.

The Virginia Governor's Council meets with Native Americans; Logan demands a treaty and decries the Yellow Creek massacre by white frontiersmen from Virginia. Suspicious of Logan's Indigenous identity, Mohawks realize he is actually an English aristocrat from Salisbury named George Clarence. They follow and attack him in the woods. Logan escapes, seriously injured.

The governor learns about Harold's sexual relationship with Elvira and banishes him to the woods. There he meets Logan and the two realize they are both in love with a Mingo woman named Loena. They threaten each other, then realize Logan is Harold's father. Logan dies after securing a promise from Harold that he will lead the Mingos to "pursue the whites to extermination, day and night, forever and ever".[1]

Harold arranges a funeral for Logan, though his body has disappeared. The funeral is attacked by Native Americans, who injure both Harold and Elvira. They reveal romantic feelings for each other, though Elvira is unconsciously attracted to Harold as a surrogate for her attraction to Logan. Harold decides to leave Virginia, but stays for Elvira. He visits her at night and the two have sex, leaving Harold racked with remorse, and running to Loena for consolation.

Harold leads the Mingo into battle against a combined force of Mohawks and British colonists. He is reunited with Loena and convinces her to join him on a trip to Europe to prepare himself for leadership of the Mingo tribe. They start by traveling to Quebec City, where Loena remains, parting with Harold on poor terms after she learns about his relationship with Elvira.

While sailing to Europe, Harold is haunted by his own thoughts of Loena and meets a child named Leopold, who grows attached to him. Harold also meets an intellectual genius named Oscar, who has long conversations with Harold, opining on capital punishment, religious freedom, American slavery, moral double standards, ancient societies, and Shakespeare. Harold witnesses him leaping overboard in a crazed fit over a former lover. Harold then learns that Elvira is on board, that Leopold is her son, and his as well. Harold was originally traveling to France, but decides to accompany her and Leopold to England, where he discovers his familial connections to British nobility.

Harold learns that his father left behind children in England and moved to North America to live a double life as Logan. Harold meets his sister Caroline and learns that Oscar was his brother and Loena is his sister. Oscar, Harold learns, was crazed by the belief that he murdered Elvira, who was once his lover. Leopold dies. Harold confesses to Elvira that he loves another woman and she confesses to him that she has loved him for his resemblance to Oscar.

Harold champions the cause of Native Americans before the British Parliament before he and Elvira return to North America. Just before they are married, Harold leaves Elvira for Loena, but learns that Loena is in love with Oscar, who did not die, but was rescued after jumping ship in the Atlantic. On a moonlit night, all four visit the spot where Harold met Logan and where the latter died. Harold is shot by a figure in the distance, who turns out to be Logan, who is still alive, but delirious. Upon learning that he has killed his son, Logan cries out, then is killed by Oscar. Loena kisses Harold's corpse and dies. Elvira confesses to Oscar her sexual history with Harold and Oscar goes mad, then dies. The narrator ends by asking English readers to "acknowledge us, as we are, the strongest (though boastful and arrogant) progeny of yourselves ... when your nation was a colossus".[2]

Themes

American Indians and US nationhood

 
Sons of Liberty in Indigenous costuming at the Boston Tea Party

John Neal wrote Logan as white American fiction authors were beginning to look toward American Indians as a dominant source of inspiration.[3] Scholars have pointed to the way Logan can be understood as portraying Indians as the originators of American nationhood, with white Americans as the inheritors of that legacy.[4] Harold calling for America's Indigenous nations to unify against British colonization seems to parallel calls by Anglo-Americans for revolution just a few years after the novel takes place.[5] The Logan of real life was an Indigenous leader of the Mingo people, but the Logan of Logan is revealed to be an English aristocrat assuming an Indigenous identity, suggesting that such an identity can be assumed by one's will.[6] Once assumed, Indigenous identity can be used to differentiate white Americans from the British in a manner similar to that used by instigators of the Boston Tea Party or the Improved Order of Red Men.[7] This would place Patriot colonists as inheritors of Indigenous territory for the making of the new American nation.[8]

Scholars see Neal's blurring of racial boundaries in family relationships as a testament to humanity's commonality.[9] This interpretation is reinforced by the characters' habit of confusing identities: Elvira mistakes Harold for Oscar, Harold mistakes Elvira for Leona, and Harold and Oscar are fashioned as character doubles.[10] It was common in nineteenth-century literature to portray American Indians as vanishing to make way for a new American national identity. This novel's uncommonly excessive and incoherent narrative could be Neal's way of indicating the contradiction inherent in this portrayal.[4] In this view, Neal's national identity of the new United States is neither Indigenous nor white, but both.[11] Writing interracial relationships and sexual fantasies into a novel in 1822 was taboo, and this pioneering effort foreshadowed future works by Nathaniel Hawthorne and other American authors.[12]

Harold being of mixed ancestry, exploring both his Indigenous identity in America and his English roots overseas, may also be a tool for Neal to question the emerging concept of manifest destiny and to paint the US as a multinational, cosmopolitan nation with permeable boundaries.[13] Acknowledging the contradictory reality of racial separation in the US may be Neal's reason for ending the novel with disaster and death for all major characters: "a place of broken hearts, and shattered intellects", as he states in the novel.[14] The novel's Gothic depiction of the genocide of Native Americans as central to the American story[15] can be seen as an indictment of American imperialism.[16] Logan's lack of coherence and cohesiveness may reflect Neal's disdain for institutional structures generally and his belief that the US, like all nations, has a finite lifespan.[17] Alternatively, it may be that Neal meant for this mass death scene at the novel's conclusion to symbolize the American Revolution's function of renewing various colonial-era allegiances into a single American nation.[18]

Sexual guilt

When he was temporarily living with the family of his business partner in 1818, Neal snuck into the bedroom of that business partner's sister, and into her bed. She cried out and Neal returned to his room before her family came to her assistance. This event, sometimes referred to by scholars as a failed seduction and sometimes as an attempted rape, was fictionalized in different forms in all of Neal's four novels published between 1822 and 1823.[19] The theme of sexual guilt running through all four novels is seen as Neal processing this personal trauma.[20] In Logan, this materialized as the dream-like and questionably-consensual sex scene between Harold and Elvira,[21] leaving the protagonist shrouded in intense sexual guilt, which he considers ending with suicide, but then channels into a war he leads against the Mohawk and British colonists.[22] This is one of multiple instances of male protagonists in Neal's novels committing sexual crimes and dealing with consequences that scholars Benjamin Lease and Hans-Joachim Lang claim "reflect a sophisticated awareness on Neal's part of male chauvinism in a male-dominated world".[23] The preponderance of complicated sexual activity and love triangles between related characters can also be interpreted as supporting the theme of American national disunity.[24] This explicitly sexual content, sometimes interracial, and exhibiting both men and women as sexually motivated, is unique for the period[25] and likely influenced Hawthorne's focus on sexual guilt in his fiction.[19]

Style

"Their blades met. Harold was the more wary, the more lightning-like, but the stranger was bolder, and stronger. Both were resolute as death. Several wounds were given, and received. Harold's sword broke to the hilt. He threw himself upon the stranger and bore him to the earth, wrenched his sword from him, and twice, in his blindness and wrath attempted, in vain, to pass it through and through his heart, as they grappled together. But twice the Englishman caught the sharp blade in his hands, and twice Harold withdrew it, by main force, through his clenched fingers, slowly severing sinew, and tendon, and flesh, and grating on the bones, as it passed. Harold gasped–the Englishman held him by the throat–the blood gushed from his ears and nostrils–once more!–he has succeeded! The blood has started through the pores of the brave fellow before him! His arteries are burst–He is dead–dead!–nailed to the earth, and Harold is sitting by him, blinded and sick.

A half hour has passed. The horse stamps, impatiently, by the corse [sic]. Why stands Harold thus, gazing upon the red ruin before him, with such deadly hatred?"

Example of gratuitous violence[26]

Like many of Neal's novels, Logan exhibits stylistic choices meant to advance American literary nationalism: natural diction, distinctly American characters, regional American colloquialism, and rhetoric of independence.[27] This is made explicit in the preface: "I hate prefaces. I hate dedications. Enough ... to say, that here is an American story".[28] This rejection of the preface's customary purpose can be read as a rejection of British literary convention that Neal sought in order to form a distinctly American literature.[29] Possibly to point out the absurdity of American novelists employing British Gothic conventions, he included those conventions only while the story had moved to England in the second volume.[30]

Logan represents Neal's effort to Americanize the Gothic style, otherwise associated with British literature, by rejecting British conventions and developing new ones based on America's history of racial persecution. In a nation bereft of ancient architecture, Neal uses natural landmarks as witnesses to colonial violence.[31] Neal was inspired by the "haunted elm" in Charles Brockden Brown's novel Edgar Huntly (1799) as a Gothic American natural landmark. Logan advanced the device by using a haunted tree visited by Harold that has stood witness to violence since long before recorded or oral histories, but most recently, the violence committed by Anglo-American colonizers against Native Americans.[32] These Gothic devices foreshadowed future works by American authors: intermingling romance and violence in American border regions in Nick of the Woods (1837) by Robert Montgomery Bird; impacts of crimes by the father on the life of the son in multiple works by Hawthorne; and maniacal psychology in multiple works by Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe, particularly Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.[33]

Scholar Theresa A. Goddu refers to the novel as "Neal's wildest gothic experiment",[15] which relies heavily on gratuitous and incessant descriptions of violence:[34] scalping, murder, hatred, rape, and incest. This was unique for the period[25] and was matched neither by Brown, Neal's inspiration in this regard, or by Poe, his best-known immediate successor.[35] The novel's conclusion, according to scholar Lillie Deming Loshe, is "an epidemic of death and insanity".[36] This brand of Gothicism also relies on loose structure and unrestrained emotional intensity to the point of incoherence.[37] Neal avoided dialogue tags "said he" and "said she" whenever possible to heighten the sense of immediacy in characters' actions.[38] His repetitive statements at moments of emotional intensity are what scholar Jonathan Elmer refers to as "spastic iteration",[39] as in: "Yes, I saw him ... alone, alone! All, all alone!" and "Not dead!–no, no, not dead!–not dead!"[40] Neal used dashes of variable lengths, varying types of ellipses, and abundant parentheses, italics, and exclamations to excite and exhaust the reader.[41] Scholars have referred to these techniques as resulting in "off-putting disjointedness",[42] "melancholic Byronism",[39] and a "hyperkinetic and sometimes hyperbolic sense of energy".[43] In his 877-page study of American literature from the Revolutionary War through 1940, scholar Alexander Cowie found that only Bird's The Hawks of Hawk Hollow (1835) could compare with Logan's level of incoherence.[44] Neal himself warned readers: "It should be taken, as people take opium. A grain may exhilarate–more may stupify–much will be death."[45]

Background

Stylistically, Logan bears the influence of Wieland (1798) and Edgar Huntly (1799) by Charles Brockden Brown,[46] whom Neal saw as his literary father and one of only two American authors beside himself who by 1825 had successfully contributed toward developing a distinctively American literature.[47] However, Neal drew the novel's core concept from "Logan's Lament",[48] a speech delivered after the conclusion of Lord Dunmore's War by an American Indian figure referred to variably as Logan or Ta-gah-jute.[49] The speech was first published in 1775, but made famous by Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson in 1787. It was commonly known by Neal's childhood, but his attention may have been directed to it by the epic poem Logan, an Indian Tale (1821) by Samuel Webber (1797–1880).[50] Neal likely believed the speech to be genuine when he wrote the novel, though in 1826 he called its provenance into question, referring to it in The London Magazine as "altogether a humbug".[51]

 
John Neal in 1823

Neal wrote Logan in Baltimore during the busiest part of his life between the bankruptcy of his dry goods business in 1816 and his departure for England in 1823.[52] He spent between six and eight weeks writing it, finishing on November 17, 1821.[53] By March 1822 he had written three more novels,[54] which he considered "a complete series; a course of experiment" in declamation (Logan), narrative (Seventy-Six), epistolary (Randolph), and colloquialism (Errata).[55] This was the most productive period of Neal's life as a novelist,[56] shortly after he passed the bar and began practicing law in 1820.[57] Whereas Keep Cool (1817) was his first serious attempt at producing literature, Logan was published after Neal had gained a considerable reputation as an author and critic,[58] and had worked for years on refining his theory of poetry to the point that he came to see the novel as the highest form of literature, able to communicate a poetic prose superior to formal poetry.[59] Between the two novels, Neal labored for years reading law and supporting himself with other literary ventures: the epic poem Battle of Niagara (1818), the index to the first twelve volumes of Niles' Weekly Register (1818), the play Otho (1819), and the nonfiction History of the American Revolution (1819),[60] as well as serving as the editor and daily columnist for the daily newspaper Federal Republican and Baltimore Telegraph for about half of 1819.[61] Neal also actively advocated many reform issues at the time and used his novels to express his opinions.[62] In Logan, he supported the rights of American Indians and condemned debtors' prisons, slavery, and capital punishment.[63] His depiction of public executions in the novel may have factored into the US movement to remove them to private settings.[64] He also attacked lotteries in the novel, depicting them as mechanisms for robbing the poor.[65]

Neal published the novel anonymously, but hinted at his authorship in Blackwood's Magazine in 1825, saying he could neither "acknowledge or deny" the claim.[66] In his 1830 anonymously-published novel Authorship, the protagonist refers to Logan as the product of Carter Holmes, the pen name he used for Blackwood's.[67] Neal's anonymously-published novel Seventy-Six is credited to "the author of Logan".[68] When Logan was republished in 1840, it was credited to "the author of Seventy-Six".[69]

Publication history

In 1821, Neal approached well-known Philadelphia publishers Carey and Lea with the manuscript of Logan.[58] They delayed publication for months because of printing issues and their own reservations concerning the novel's profanity, "wildness", and "incoherence", which they claimed made the story "not well calculated for the novel readers of our day".[70] The first edition was released in two volumes in April 1822.[58] Published five years after Keep Cool, Logan was Neal's second novel, but his first of notable success.[71] It was pirated in London three times: under the original title by A. K. Newman and Company in 1823 and as Logan, the Mingo Chief. A Family History by J. Cunningham in 1840 and 1845.[72] It was Neal's first novel published outside the US and the only one ever published abroad more than once.[58] Despite the considerable influence it had on future American writers, Logan was never republished in the US.[73] Carey and Lea refused to publish anything else by Neal, likely because of the novel's poor sales.[74] Neal nevertheless enjoyed encouragement enough to continue his career as a novelist.[63]

Reception

Period critique

 
Illustration from The Pioneers

Logan received generally favorable criticism in both the US and UK, though British reviews were more often mixed in praising it as the work of a genius while criticizing it as erratic.[75] Philadelphia journalist Stephen Simpson issued ecstatic praise: "In all the productions of the human understanding, that we have ever heard of, ... we remember nothing, we know of nothing, we can conceive of nothing equal to this romance."[76] Comparing to Neal's chief rival, James Fenimore Cooper,[77] Simpson expresses "astonishment that the still life of the Pioneers, should be read and applauded in the same age that produced Logan!"[76] A British journalist in The Literary Gazette made a similar comparison to Cooper, noting that Logan and Neal's subsequent novels Seventy-Six and Brother Jonathan are "three of about as extraordinary works as ever appeared–full of faults, but still full of power; if we except these, there is no rival near Mr. Cooper's throne."[78] The British Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review praised Neal's lifelike depiction of Indigenous dialogue and claimed that Logan "possesses considerable interest, and the work will be no discredit to the shelves of a modern circulating library".[79] The British Magazine of Foreign Literature claimed that the novel failed because of its rejection of established British literary conventions:[80]

It would be difficult, indeed, to guess what end he purposed to accomplish by his singular work. It could not be to amuse his readers, because it is intelligible; if he wished to frighten them he has failed of his end, for he only makes them laugh .... We laugh not with him, but at him. His style is the most singular that can be imagined–it is like the raving of a bedlamite. There are words in it, but no sense .... We have taken some pains to inquire who the author may be, but without success;–it is, perhaps, as well that we are in ignorance of his name; the knowledge must be painful, as we have no doubt that the poor gentleman is at this time suffering the wholesome restraint of a straw cell and a strait waistcoat. If he is not, there is no justice in America.[81]

Neal's self-criticism acknowledges the novel's fatal excesses.[82] The preface to Seventy-Six (1823) bemoans Logan's "rambling incoherency, passion, and extravagance" and expresses Neal's hope (writing anonymously) that he showed improvement with that novel.[83] His next (also anonymously-published) novel after that, Randolph (1823), includes this criticism of Logan from the protagonist: "Nobody can read it through, deliberately, as novels are to be read. You are fagged and fretted to death, long and long before you foresee the termination."[84] Two years after that, he wrote under an English pen name in the Scottish Blackwood's Magazine: "Logan is full of power–eloquence–poetry–instinct ...: Yet so crowded–so incoherent– ... so outrageously overdone, that no-body can read it through. Parts are without parallel for passionate beauty;–power of language: deep tenderness, poetry–yet every page ... is rank with corruption–the terrible corruption of genius."[85] Writing under his own name in his autobiography almost a half century later, he called Logan "a wild, passionate, extravagant affair with some ... of the most eloquent and fervid writing I was ever guilty of, either in prose or poetry".[86]

Modern views

Most modern scholars agree that Logan is too incoherent to enjoy.[82] Cowie found the novel confusing for all of Neal's attempts at exuding high energy and emotion.[87] Biographer Irving T. Richards felt similarly about the novel's excessive Gothic features[88] and added that he considered the characters unrealistic: "They are swept by emotional waves over which they have no control and for which they are not accountable."[89] Scholar Fritz Fleischmann feels the novel is "oversized and excessive" and full of "lacerating thoughts [that] pass by the reader, often without much rhyme or reason."[90] Biographer Benjamin Lease dubs it "an incoherent failure" of "high pitched absurdity" with "scarcely a plot".[91] Authors of the Literary History of the United States claimed Neal must have been too busy with his law studies and other simultaneous literary pursuits to be original: "He snatched high-minded villains from Godwin and low-minded heroes from Byron, then sent them roaring and murdering through the hackneyed routines of cheap melodramas".[92] Literary historian Fred Lewis Pattee, who collected a series of Neal's literary criticism for publication in 1937, remarked on Neal's rapidity in drafting novels like Logan: "Two-volume novels thrown off in a month! Hard to believe–until one reads the novels."[93]

Richards also felt that Logan's plot structure showed a clear improvement over Neal's first novel, Keep Cool,[94] with better use of characters, tone, structure, and suspense.[95] Cowie felt that there was particular strength in the novel's psychological horror that foreshadowed later works by Poe.[87] Arthur Hobson Quinn felt similarly, pointing to the fact that the publishers were challenged to prove that the novel was not a copy of the celebrated William Godwin, because Godwin's novel The Pirate was published just months prior.[96] Goddu went further to say that those Gothic elements surpassed anything by either Poe or Brown.[97] Also comparing to Neal's peers, scholar Philip F. Gura called the novel "remarkable" for documenting the historic reality of interracial relationships that contemporaries like Cooper avoided.[98] Fleischmann praised Logan's verisimilitude: "Spurning the adornments of past literary styles, it succeeds by spontaneity ..., by recreating the tumble of emotions present in real life."[99]

References

Citations

  1. ^ Neal 1822a, p. 110.
  2. ^ Neal 1822b, p. 340.
  3. ^ Goddu 1997, p. 57.
  4. ^ a b Goddu 1997, p. 63.
  5. ^ Pethers 2012, p. 9.
  6. ^ Nelson 1998, pp. 92–94.
  7. ^ Nelson 1998, p. 101.
  8. ^ Nelson 1998, pp. 88, 90.
  9. ^ Goddu 1997, pp. 60, 65.
  10. ^ Goddu 1997, p. 65.
  11. ^ Elmer 2006–2007, p. 167.
  12. ^ Gura 2013, pp. 43, 46.
  13. ^ Richter 2003, p. 246; Watts 2012, pp. 212–213; Goddu 1997, p. 66.
  14. ^ Richter 2003, p. 247, quoting Logan.
  15. ^ a b Goddu 1997, p. 53.
  16. ^ Welch 2021, p. 486.
  17. ^ Elmer 2006–2007, pp. 160–163.
  18. ^ Pethers 2012, p. 10.
  19. ^ a b Fleischmann 1983, p. 246.
  20. ^ Fleischmann 2012, p. 252.
  21. ^ Lease 1972, p. 91.
  22. ^ Fleischmann 1983, p. 249.
  23. ^ Lease & Lang 1978, p. xvii.
  24. ^ Goddu 1997, p. 67.
  25. ^ a b Gura 2013, p. 44.
  26. ^ Neal 1822a, p. 216.
  27. ^ Pethers 2012, pp. 8–9.
  28. ^ Pethers 2012, p. 8, quoting Logan's preface.
  29. ^ Merlob 2012, p. 102.
  30. ^ Welch 2021, pp. 471–472.
  31. ^ Welch 2021, p. 484; Goddu 1997, pp. 53–55.
  32. ^ Sivils 2012, pp. 42–45.
  33. ^ Lease 1972, pp. 90–91; Sears 1978, p. 43.
  34. ^ Sivils 2012, p. 42; Goddu 1997, p. 64.
  35. ^ Goddu 1997, pp. 60, 72.
  36. ^ Loshe 1958, p. 93.
  37. ^ Goddu 1997, p. 59.
  38. ^ Martin 1959, p. 470.
  39. ^ a b Elmer 2006–2007, p. 154.
  40. ^ Elmer 2006–2007, p. 167, quoting Logan.
  41. ^ Goddu 1997, pp. 62, 66.
  42. ^ Welch 2021, p. 483.
  43. ^ Watts & Carlson 2012b, p. xxv.
  44. ^ Cowie 1948, p. 251.
  45. ^ Sears 1978, p. 44, quoting Neal.
  46. ^ Lease 1972, p. 90; Fleischmann 1983, p. 251; Sivils 2012, pp. 42–45.
  47. ^ Fleischmann 1983, pp. 5–8.
  48. ^ Goddu 1997, p. 61.
  49. ^ Richards 1933, pp. 329–330; Goddu 1997, p. 60.
  50. ^ Richards 1933, p. 327.
  51. ^ Richards 1933, p. 329n4, quoting Neal.
  52. ^ Fleischmann 1983, p. 147.
  53. ^ Richards 1933, pp. 322–323.
  54. ^ Lease 1972, p. 22.
  55. ^ Sears 1978, p. 56, quoting Neal.
  56. ^ Sears 1978, p. 34.
  57. ^ Richards 1933, pp. 90n1, 196–197.
  58. ^ a b c d Richards 1933, p. 323.
  59. ^ Sears 1978, p. 39.
  60. ^ Sears 1978, p. 40.
  61. ^ Sears 1978, pp. 146–147; Gallant 2012, p. 1.
  62. ^ Martin 1959, pp. 457–458.
  63. ^ a b Cowie 1948, p. 166.
  64. ^ Jackson 1907, p. 521.
  65. ^ Sears 1978, p. 105.
  66. ^ Elmer 2012, p. 150, quoting Neal.
  67. ^ Richter 2012, p. 79.
  68. ^ Neal 1971, Title page.
  69. ^ Neal 1840, Title page.
  70. ^ Lease 1972, p. 40, quoting letters from the publishers to Neal.
  71. ^ Nelson 1998, p. 90.
  72. ^ Richards 1933, p. 323; Sears 1978, p. 133n14.
  73. ^ Sears 1978, p. 44.
  74. ^ Goddu 1997, p. 175n12.
  75. ^ Richards 1933, pp. 324–325; Sears 1978, pp. 40, 44; Lease & Lang 1978, p. xiv.
  76. ^ a b Lease 1972, p. 41, quoting Stephen Simpson.
  77. ^ Lease 1972, p. 39.
  78. ^ Cairns 1922, p. 150, quoting The Literary Gazette.
  79. ^ Richards 1933, p. 325.
  80. ^ Richards 1933, pp. 324–325.
  81. ^ Cairns 1922, p. 208, quoting Magazine of Foreign Literature.
  82. ^ a b Goddu 1997, p. 62.
  83. ^ Goddu 1997, p. 61, quoting Seventy-Six.
  84. ^ Goddu 1997, pp. 174–175n11, quoting Randolph.
  85. ^ Sears 1978, p. 44, quoting Blackwood's Magazine.
  86. ^ Sears 1978, p. 40, quoting Neal's autobiography.
  87. ^ a b Cowie 1948, p. 168.
  88. ^ Richards 1933, p. 347.
  89. ^ Richards 1933, p. 340.
  90. ^ Fleischmann 1983, p. 251.
  91. ^ Lease 1972, pp. 86, 90, 106.
  92. ^ Spiller et al. 1963, p. 291.
  93. ^ Pattee 1937, p. 5.
  94. ^ Richards 1933, pp. 334–335.
  95. ^ Richards 1933, pp. 325–326.
  96. ^ Quinn 1964, p. 48.
  97. ^ Goddu 1997, p. 60.
  98. ^ Gura 2013, p. 43.
  99. ^ Fleischmann 1983, p. 242.

Sources

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  • Cowie, Alexander (1948). The Rise of the American Novel. New York City, New York: American Book Company. OCLC 268679.
  • DiMercurio, Catherine C., ed. (2018). Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism: Criticism of the Works of Novelists, Philosophers, and Other Creative Writers Who Died between 1800 and 1899, from the First Published Critical Appraisals to Current Evaluations. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale, A Cengage Company. ISBN 9781410378514.
  • Elmer, Jonathan (Fall 2006 – Spring 2007). "Melancholy, Race, and Sovereign Exemption in Early American Fiction". NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction. 40 (1/2): 151–170. doi:10.1215/ddnov.040010151. JSTOR 40267688.
  • Elmer, Jonathan (2012). "John Neal and John Dunn Hunter". John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. pp. 145–157. In Watts & Carlson (2012a).
  • Fleischmann, Fritz (1983). A Right View of the Subject: Feminism in the Works of Charles Brockden Brown and John Neal. Erlangen, Germany: Verlag Palm & Enke Erlangen. ISBN 9783789601477.
  • Fleischmann, Fritz (2012). "Chapter 12: "A Right Manly Man" in 1843: John Neal on Women's Rights and the Problem of Male Feminism". John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. pp. 247–270. In Watts & Carlson (2012a).
  • Gallant, Cliff (July 13, 2012). "The Churlish and Brilliant John Neal". The Portland Daily Sun. Portland, Maine. pp. 1, 5.
  • Goddu, Theresa A. (1997). Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation. New York City, New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231108171.
  • Gura, Philip F. (2013). Truth's Ragged Edge: The Rise of the American Novel. New York City, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 9780809094455.
  • Jackson, Charles E. (July 1907). "Maine Charitable Mechanic Association". Pine Tree Magazine. Vol. 7, no. 6. Portland, Maine: Sale Publishing Co. pp. 515–523.
  • Lease, Benjamin (1972). That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226469690.
  • Lease, Benjamin; Lang, Hans-Joachim, eds. (1978). The Genius of John Neal: Selections from His Writings. Las Vegas, Nevada: Peter Lang. ISBN 9783261023827.
  • Loshe, Lillie Deming (1958) [1907]. The Early American Novel 1789–1830. New York City, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. OCLC 269646.
  • Merlob, Maya (2012). "Celebrated Rubbish: John Neal and the Commercialization of Early American Romanticism". John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. pp. 99–122. In Watts & Carlson (2012a).
  • Martin, Harold C. (December 1959). "The Colloquial Tradition in the Novel: John Neal". The New England Quarterly. 32 (4): 455–475. doi:10.2307/362501. JSTOR 362501.
  • Neal, John (1822a). Logan, a Family History. Vol. 1. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: H. C. Carey & I. Lea. OCLC 12207199.
  • Neal, John (1822b). Logan, a Family History. Vol. 2. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: H. C. Carey & I. Lea. OCLC 12207199.
  • Neal, John (1840). Logan, the Mingo Chief. A Family History. London, England: J. Cunningham. OCLC 11243702.
  • Neal, John (1971). Seventy-Six. Bainbridge, New York: York Mail–Print, Inc. OCLC 40318310. Facsimile reproduction of 1823 Baltimore edition, two volumes in one.
  • Nelson, Dana D. (1998). National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822321491.
  • Pattee, Fred Lewis, ed. (1937). American Writers: A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine (1824–1825). Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. OCLC 464953146.
  • Pethers, Matthew (2012). "'I Must Resemble Nobody': John Neal, Genre, and the Making of American Literary Nationalism". John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. pp. 1–38. In Watts & Carlson (2012a).
  • Quinn, Arthur Hobson (1964) [1936]. American Fiction: An Historical and Critical Survey (Students' ed.). New York City, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc. OCLC 610879015.
  • Richards, Irving T. (1933). The Life and Works of John Neal (PhD). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. OCLC 7588473.
  • Richter, Jörg Thomas (2003) [Originally published in Colonial Encounters: Essays in Early American History and Culture. Heidelberg, Germany: Universitätsverlag Winter. pp. 157–172]. "Exemplary American: Logan, the Mingo Chief, in Jefferson, Neal, and Doddridge". Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism: Criticism of the Works of Novelists, Philosophers, and Other Creative Writers Who Died between 1800 and 1899, from the First Published Critical Appraisals to Current Evaluations. pp. 241–249. In DiMercurio (2018).
  • Richter, Jörg Thomas (2012). "Notes on Poetic Push-Pin and the Writing of Life in John Neal's Authorship". John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. pp. 75–97. In Watts & Carlson (2012a).
  • Sears, Donald A. (1978). John Neal. Boston, Massachusetts: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8057-7230-2.
  • Sivils, Matthew Wynn (2012). "Chapter 2: "The Herbage of Death": Haunted Environments in John Neal and James Fenimore Cooper". John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. pp. 39–56. In Watts & Carlson (2012a).
  • Spiller, Robert E.; Thorp, Willard; Johnson, Thomas H.; Canby, Henry Seidel; Ludwig, Richard M., eds. (1963). The Literary History of the United States: History (3rd ed.). London, England: The Macmillan Company. OCLC 269181.
  • Watts, Edward (2012). "He Could Not Believe that Butchering Red Men Was Serving Our Maker: 'David Whicher' and the Indian Hater Tradition". John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. pp. 209–226. In Watts & Carlson (2012a).
  • Watts, Edward; Carlson, David J., eds. (2012a). John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania: Bucknell University Press. ISBN 9781611484205.
  • Watts, Edward; Carlson, David J. (2012b). "Introduction". John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture. pp. xi–xxxiv. In Watts & Carlson (2012a).
  • Welch, Ellen Bufford (2021). "Literary Nationalism and the Renunciation of the British Gothic Tradition in the Novels of John Neal". Early American Literature. 56 (2): 471–497. doi:10.1353/eal.2021.0039. S2CID 243142175.

External links

  • Logan, a Family History 1822 Philadelphia edition at the Internet Archive
  • Logan, a Family History 1822 Philadelphia edition available at Hathitrust
  • Logan, a Family History 1823 London edition available at Google Books in four volumes: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4
  • Logan, the Mingo Chief. A Family History 1840 London edition available at Hathitrust

logan, novel, logan, family, history, gothic, novel, historical, fiction, american, writer, john, neal, published, anonymously, baltimore, 1822, book, inspired, true, story, mingo, leader, logan, orator, weaves, highly, fictionalized, story, interactions, betw. Logan a Family History is a Gothic novel of historical fiction by American writer John Neal Published anonymously in Baltimore in 1822 the book is inspired by the true story of Mingo leader Logan the Orator but weaves a highly fictionalized story of interactions between Anglo American colonists and Indigenous peoples on the western frontier of colonial Virginia Set just before the Revolutionary War it depicts the genocide of Native Americans as the heart of the American story and follows a long cast of characters connected to each other in a complex web of overlapping love interests family relations rape and sometimes incestuous sexual activity Logan a Family HistoryTitle page of the first edition volume 1AuthorJohn NealCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishGenreGothic historicalSet inColony of VirginiaPublisherH C Carey amp I LeaPublication date1822Media typePrintPages658 first edition OCLC12207199LC ClassPZ3 N2521Logan was Neal s second novel but his first notable success attracting generally favorable reviews in both the US and UK He wrote the story over a six to eight week stretch at a time when he was producing more novels and juggling more responsibilities than any other period of his life Likely a commercial failure for the publisher who refused to work with Neal in the future the book nevertheless saw three printings in the UK Scholars criticize the story s profound excessiveness and incoherence but praise its pioneering and successful experimentation with psychological horror verisimilitude sexual guilt in male characters impacts of intergenerational violence and documentation of interracial relationships and intersections between sex and violence on the American frontier These experimentations influenced later American writers and foreshadowed fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne Walt Whitman Robert Montgomery Bird and Edgar Allan Poe The novel is considered important by scholars studying the roles of Gothic literature and Indigenous identities in fashioning an American national identity It advanced the American literary nationalist goal of developing a new native literature by experimenting with natural diction distinctly American characters regional American colloquialism and fiercely independent rhetoric It is considered unique amongst contemporary fiction for the preponderance of sexually explicit content and gratuitous violence Contents 1 Plot 2 Themes 2 1 American Indians and US nationhood 2 2 Sexual guilt 3 Style 4 Background 5 Publication history 6 Reception 6 1 Period critique 6 2 Modern views 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 Sources 8 External linksPlot Edit Logan in the aftermath of the Yellow Creek massacre The story begins in the colony of Virginia in 1774 Mingo chief Logan enters the chamber of the governor of Virginia and overpowers him The governor is saved by Harold a young man of mixed English and Indigenous descent who lives among the Mingo Harold impregnates the half asleep governor s wife Elvira who is infatuated with Logan and finds Harold similarly attractive The Virginia Governor s Council meets with Native Americans Logan demands a treaty and decries the Yellow Creek massacre by white frontiersmen from Virginia Suspicious of Logan s Indigenous identity Mohawks realize he is actually an English aristocrat from Salisbury named George Clarence They follow and attack him in the woods Logan escapes seriously injured The governor learns about Harold s sexual relationship with Elvira and banishes him to the woods There he meets Logan and the two realize they are both in love with a Mingo woman named Loena They threaten each other then realize Logan is Harold s father Logan dies after securing a promise from Harold that he will lead the Mingos to pursue the whites to extermination day and night forever and ever 1 Harold arranges a funeral for Logan though his body has disappeared The funeral is attacked by Native Americans who injure both Harold and Elvira They reveal romantic feelings for each other though Elvira is unconsciously attracted to Harold as a surrogate for her attraction to Logan Harold decides to leave Virginia but stays for Elvira He visits her at night and the two have sex leaving Harold racked with remorse and running to Loena for consolation Harold leads the Mingo into battle against a combined force of Mohawks and British colonists He is reunited with Loena and convinces her to join him on a trip to Europe to prepare himself for leadership of the Mingo tribe They start by traveling to Quebec City where Loena remains parting with Harold on poor terms after she learns about his relationship with Elvira While sailing to Europe Harold is haunted by his own thoughts of Loena and meets a child named Leopold who grows attached to him Harold also meets an intellectual genius named Oscar who has long conversations with Harold opining on capital punishment religious freedom American slavery moral double standards ancient societies and Shakespeare Harold witnesses him leaping overboard in a crazed fit over a former lover Harold then learns that Elvira is on board that Leopold is her son and his as well Harold was originally traveling to France but decides to accompany her and Leopold to England where he discovers his familial connections to British nobility Harold learns that his father left behind children in England and moved to North America to live a double life as Logan Harold meets his sister Caroline and learns that Oscar was his brother and Loena is his sister Oscar Harold learns was crazed by the belief that he murdered Elvira who was once his lover Leopold dies Harold confesses to Elvira that he loves another woman and she confesses to him that she has loved him for his resemblance to Oscar Harold champions the cause of Native Americans before the British Parliament before he and Elvira return to North America Just before they are married Harold leaves Elvira for Loena but learns that Loena is in love with Oscar who did not die but was rescued after jumping ship in the Atlantic On a moonlit night all four visit the spot where Harold met Logan and where the latter died Harold is shot by a figure in the distance who turns out to be Logan who is still alive but delirious Upon learning that he has killed his son Logan cries out then is killed by Oscar Loena kisses Harold s corpse and dies Elvira confesses to Oscar her sexual history with Harold and Oscar goes mad then dies The narrator ends by asking English readers to acknowledge us as we are the strongest though boastful and arrogant progeny of yourselves when your nation was a colossus 2 Themes EditAmerican Indians and US nationhood Edit Sons of Liberty in Indigenous costuming at the Boston Tea Party John Neal wrote Logan as white American fiction authors were beginning to look toward American Indians as a dominant source of inspiration 3 Scholars have pointed to the way Logan can be understood as portraying Indians as the originators of American nationhood with white Americans as the inheritors of that legacy 4 Harold calling for America s Indigenous nations to unify against British colonization seems to parallel calls by Anglo Americans for revolution just a few years after the novel takes place 5 The Logan of real life was an Indigenous leader of the Mingo people but the Logan of Logan is revealed to be an English aristocrat assuming an Indigenous identity suggesting that such an identity can be assumed by one s will 6 Once assumed Indigenous identity can be used to differentiate white Americans from the British in a manner similar to that used by instigators of the Boston Tea Party or the Improved Order of Red Men 7 This would place Patriot colonists as inheritors of Indigenous territory for the making of the new American nation 8 Scholars see Neal s blurring of racial boundaries in family relationships as a testament to humanity s commonality 9 This interpretation is reinforced by the characters habit of confusing identities Elvira mistakes Harold for Oscar Harold mistakes Elvira for Leona and Harold and Oscar are fashioned as character doubles 10 It was common in nineteenth century literature to portray American Indians as vanishing to make way for a new American national identity This novel s uncommonly excessive and incoherent narrative could be Neal s way of indicating the contradiction inherent in this portrayal 4 In this view Neal s national identity of the new United States is neither Indigenous nor white but both 11 Writing interracial relationships and sexual fantasies into a novel in 1822 was taboo and this pioneering effort foreshadowed future works by Nathaniel Hawthorne and other American authors 12 Harold being of mixed ancestry exploring both his Indigenous identity in America and his English roots overseas may also be a tool for Neal to question the emerging concept of manifest destiny and to paint the US as a multinational cosmopolitan nation with permeable boundaries 13 Acknowledging the contradictory reality of racial separation in the US may be Neal s reason for ending the novel with disaster and death for all major characters a place of broken hearts and shattered intellects as he states in the novel 14 The novel s Gothic depiction of the genocide of Native Americans as central to the American story 15 can be seen as an indictment of American imperialism 16 Logan s lack of coherence and cohesiveness may reflect Neal s disdain for institutional structures generally and his belief that the US like all nations has a finite lifespan 17 Alternatively it may be that Neal meant for this mass death scene at the novel s conclusion to symbolize the American Revolution s function of renewing various colonial era allegiances into a single American nation 18 Sexual guilt Edit When he was temporarily living with the family of his business partner in 1818 Neal snuck into the bedroom of that business partner s sister and into her bed She cried out and Neal returned to his room before her family came to her assistance This event sometimes referred to by scholars as a failed seduction and sometimes as an attempted rape was fictionalized in different forms in all of Neal s four novels published between 1822 and 1823 19 The theme of sexual guilt running through all four novels is seen as Neal processing this personal trauma 20 In Logan this materialized as the dream like and questionably consensual sex scene between Harold and Elvira 21 leaving the protagonist shrouded in intense sexual guilt which he considers ending with suicide but then channels into a war he leads against the Mohawk and British colonists 22 This is one of multiple instances of male protagonists in Neal s novels committing sexual crimes and dealing with consequences that scholars Benjamin Lease and Hans Joachim Lang claim reflect a sophisticated awareness on Neal s part of male chauvinism in a male dominated world 23 The preponderance of complicated sexual activity and love triangles between related characters can also be interpreted as supporting the theme of American national disunity 24 This explicitly sexual content sometimes interracial and exhibiting both men and women as sexually motivated is unique for the period 25 and likely influenced Hawthorne s focus on sexual guilt in his fiction 19 Style Edit Their blades met Harold was the more wary the more lightning like but the stranger was bolder and stronger Both were resolute as death Several wounds were given and received Harold s sword broke to the hilt He threw himself upon the stranger and bore him to the earth wrenched his sword from him and twice in his blindness and wrath attempted in vain to pass it through and through his heart as they grappled together But twice the Englishman caught the sharp blade in his hands and twice Harold withdrew it by main force through his clenched fingers slowly severing sinew and tendon and flesh and grating on the bones as it passed Harold gasped the Englishman held him by the throat the blood gushed from his ears and nostrils once more he has succeeded The blood has started through the pores of the brave fellow before him His arteries are burst He is dead dead nailed to the earth and Harold is sitting by him blinded and sick A half hour has passed The horse stamps impatiently by the corse sic Why stands Harold thus gazing upon the red ruin before him with such deadly hatred Example of gratuitous violence 26 Like many of Neal s novels Logan exhibits stylistic choices meant to advance American literary nationalism natural diction distinctly American characters regional American colloquialism and rhetoric of independence 27 This is made explicit in the preface I hate prefaces I hate dedications Enough to say that here is an American story 28 This rejection of the preface s customary purpose can be read as a rejection of British literary convention that Neal sought in order to form a distinctly American literature 29 Possibly to point out the absurdity of American novelists employing British Gothic conventions he included those conventions only while the story had moved to England in the second volume 30 Logan represents Neal s effort to Americanize the Gothic style otherwise associated with British literature by rejecting British conventions and developing new ones based on America s history of racial persecution In a nation bereft of ancient architecture Neal uses natural landmarks as witnesses to colonial violence 31 Neal was inspired by the haunted elm in Charles Brockden Brown s novel Edgar Huntly 1799 as a Gothic American natural landmark Logan advanced the device by using a haunted tree visited by Harold that has stood witness to violence since long before recorded or oral histories but most recently the violence committed by Anglo American colonizers against Native Americans 32 These Gothic devices foreshadowed future works by American authors intermingling romance and violence in American border regions in Nick of the Woods 1837 by Robert Montgomery Bird impacts of crimes by the father on the life of the son in multiple works by Hawthorne and maniacal psychology in multiple works by Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe particularly Poe s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym 33 Scholar Theresa A Goddu refers to the novel as Neal s wildest gothic experiment 15 which relies heavily on gratuitous and incessant descriptions of violence 34 scalping murder hatred rape and incest This was unique for the period 25 and was matched neither by Brown Neal s inspiration in this regard or by Poe his best known immediate successor 35 The novel s conclusion according to scholar Lillie Deming Loshe is an epidemic of death and insanity 36 This brand of Gothicism also relies on loose structure and unrestrained emotional intensity to the point of incoherence 37 Neal avoided dialogue tags said he and said she whenever possible to heighten the sense of immediacy in characters actions 38 His repetitive statements at moments of emotional intensity are what scholar Jonathan Elmer refers to as spastic iteration 39 as in Yes I saw him alone alone All all alone and Not dead no no not dead not dead 40 Neal used dashes of variable lengths varying types of ellipses and abundant parentheses italics and exclamations to excite and exhaust the reader 41 Scholars have referred to these techniques as resulting in off putting disjointedness 42 melancholic Byronism 39 and a hyperkinetic and sometimes hyperbolic sense of energy 43 In his 877 page study of American literature from the Revolutionary War through 1940 scholar Alexander Cowie found that only Bird s The Hawks of Hawk Hollow 1835 could compare with Logan s level of incoherence 44 Neal himself warned readers It should be taken as people take opium A grain may exhilarate more may stupify much will be death 45 Background EditStylistically Logan bears the influence of Wieland 1798 and Edgar Huntly 1799 by Charles Brockden Brown 46 whom Neal saw as his literary father and one of only two American authors beside himself who by 1825 had successfully contributed toward developing a distinctively American literature 47 However Neal drew the novel s core concept from Logan s Lament 48 a speech delivered after the conclusion of Lord Dunmore s War by an American Indian figure referred to variably as Logan or Ta gah jute 49 The speech was first published in 1775 but made famous by Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson in 1787 It was commonly known by Neal s childhood but his attention may have been directed to it by the epic poem Logan an Indian Tale 1821 by Samuel Webber 1797 1880 50 Neal likely believed the speech to be genuine when he wrote the novel though in 1826 he called its provenance into question referring to it in The London Magazine as altogether a humbug 51 John Neal in 1823 Neal wrote Logan in Baltimore during the busiest part of his life between the bankruptcy of his dry goods business in 1816 and his departure for England in 1823 52 He spent between six and eight weeks writing it finishing on November 17 1821 53 By March 1822 he had written three more novels 54 which he considered a complete series a course of experiment in declamation Logan narrative Seventy Six epistolary Randolph and colloquialism Errata 55 This was the most productive period of Neal s life as a novelist 56 shortly after he passed the bar and began practicing law in 1820 57 Whereas Keep Cool 1817 was his first serious attempt at producing literature Logan was published after Neal had gained a considerable reputation as an author and critic 58 and had worked for years on refining his theory of poetry to the point that he came to see the novel as the highest form of literature able to communicate a poetic prose superior to formal poetry 59 Between the two novels Neal labored for years reading law and supporting himself with other literary ventures the epic poem Battle of Niagara 1818 the index to the first twelve volumes of Niles Weekly Register 1818 the play Otho 1819 and the nonfiction History of the American Revolution 1819 60 as well as serving as the editor and daily columnist for the daily newspaper Federal Republican and Baltimore Telegraph for about half of 1819 61 Neal also actively advocated many reform issues at the time and used his novels to express his opinions 62 In Logan he supported the rights of American Indians and condemned debtors prisons slavery and capital punishment 63 His depiction of public executions in the novel may have factored into the US movement to remove them to private settings 64 He also attacked lotteries in the novel depicting them as mechanisms for robbing the poor 65 Neal published the novel anonymously but hinted at his authorship in Blackwood s Magazine in 1825 saying he could neither acknowledge or deny the claim 66 In his 1830 anonymously published novel Authorship the protagonist refers to Logan as the product of Carter Holmes the pen name he used for Blackwood s 67 Neal s anonymously published novel Seventy Six is credited to the author of Logan 68 When Logan was republished in 1840 it was credited to the author of Seventy Six 69 Publication history EditIn 1821 Neal approached well known Philadelphia publishers Carey and Lea with the manuscript of Logan 58 They delayed publication for months because of printing issues and their own reservations concerning the novel s profanity wildness and incoherence which they claimed made the story not well calculated for the novel readers of our day 70 The first edition was released in two volumes in April 1822 58 Published five years after Keep Cool Logan was Neal s second novel but his first of notable success 71 It was pirated in London three times under the original title by A K Newman and Company in 1823 and as Logan the Mingo Chief A Family History by J Cunningham in 1840 and 1845 72 It was Neal s first novel published outside the US and the only one ever published abroad more than once 58 Despite the considerable influence it had on future American writers Logan was never republished in the US 73 Carey and Lea refused to publish anything else by Neal likely because of the novel s poor sales 74 Neal nevertheless enjoyed encouragement enough to continue his career as a novelist 63 Reception EditPeriod critique Edit Illustration from The Pioneers Logan received generally favorable criticism in both the US and UK though British reviews were more often mixed in praising it as the work of a genius while criticizing it as erratic 75 Philadelphia journalist Stephen Simpson issued ecstatic praise In all the productions of the human understanding that we have ever heard of we remember nothing we know of nothing we can conceive of nothing equal to this romance 76 Comparing to Neal s chief rival James Fenimore Cooper 77 Simpson expresses astonishment that the still life of the Pioneers should be read and applauded in the same age that produced Logan 76 A British journalist in The Literary Gazette made a similar comparison to Cooper noting that Logan and Neal s subsequent novels Seventy Six and Brother Jonathan are three of about as extraordinary works as ever appeared full of faults but still full of power if we except these there is no rival near Mr Cooper s throne 78 The British Literary Chronicle and Weekly Review praised Neal s lifelike depiction of Indigenous dialogue and claimed that Logan possesses considerable interest and the work will be no discredit to the shelves of a modern circulating library 79 The British Magazine of Foreign Literature claimed that the novel failed because of its rejection of established British literary conventions 80 It would be difficult indeed to guess what end he purposed to accomplish by his singular work It could not be to amuse his readers because it is intelligible if he wished to frighten them he has failed of his end for he only makes them laugh We laugh not with him but at him His style is the most singular that can be imagined it is like the raving of a bedlamite There are words in it but no sense We have taken some pains to inquire who the author may be but without success it is perhaps as well that we are in ignorance of his name the knowledge must be painful as we have no doubt that the poor gentleman is at this time suffering the wholesome restraint of a straw cell and a strait waistcoat If he is not there is no justice in America 81 Neal s self criticism acknowledges the novel s fatal excesses 82 The preface to Seventy Six 1823 bemoans Logan s rambling incoherency passion and extravagance and expresses Neal s hope writing anonymously that he showed improvement with that novel 83 His next also anonymously published novel after that Randolph 1823 includes this criticism of Logan from the protagonist Nobody can read it through deliberately as novels are to be read You are fagged and fretted to death long and long before you foresee the termination 84 Two years after that he wrote under an English pen name in the Scottish Blackwood s Magazine Logan is full of power eloquence poetry instinct Yet so crowded so incoherent so outrageously overdone that no body can read it through Parts are without parallel for passionate beauty power of language deep tenderness poetry yet every page is rank with corruption the terrible corruption of genius 85 Writing under his own name in his autobiography almost a half century later he called Logan a wild passionate extravagant affair with some of the most eloquent and fervid writing I was ever guilty of either in prose or poetry 86 Modern views Edit Most modern scholars agree that Logan is too incoherent to enjoy 82 Cowie found the novel confusing for all of Neal s attempts at exuding high energy and emotion 87 Biographer Irving T Richards felt similarly about the novel s excessive Gothic features 88 and added that he considered the characters unrealistic They are swept by emotional waves over which they have no control and for which they are not accountable 89 Scholar Fritz Fleischmann feels the novel is oversized and excessive and full of lacerating thoughts that pass by the reader often without much rhyme or reason 90 Biographer Benjamin Lease dubs it an incoherent failure of high pitched absurdity with scarcely a plot 91 Authors of the Literary History of the United States claimed Neal must have been too busy with his law studies and other simultaneous literary pursuits to be original He snatched high minded villains from Godwin and low minded heroes from Byron then sent them roaring and murdering through the hackneyed routines of cheap melodramas 92 Literary historian Fred Lewis Pattee who collected a series of Neal s literary criticism for publication in 1937 remarked on Neal s rapidity in drafting novels like Logan Two volume novels thrown off in a month Hard to believe until one reads the novels 93 Richards also felt that Logan s plot structure showed a clear improvement over Neal s first novel Keep Cool 94 with better use of characters tone structure and suspense 95 Cowie felt that there was particular strength in the novel s psychological horror that foreshadowed later works by Poe 87 Arthur Hobson Quinn felt similarly pointing to the fact that the publishers were challenged to prove that the novel was not a copy of the celebrated William Godwin because Godwin s novel The Pirate was published just months prior 96 Goddu went further to say that those Gothic elements surpassed anything by either Poe or Brown 97 Also comparing to Neal s peers scholar Philip F Gura called the novel remarkable for documenting the historic reality of interracial relationships that contemporaries like Cooper avoided 98 Fleischmann praised Logan s verisimilitude Spurning the adornments of past literary styles it succeeds by spontaneity by recreating the tumble of emotions present in real life 99 References EditCitations Edit Neal 1822a p 110 Neal 1822b p 340 Goddu 1997 p 57 a b Goddu 1997 p 63 Pethers 2012 p 9 Nelson 1998 pp 92 94 Nelson 1998 p 101 Nelson 1998 pp 88 90 Goddu 1997 pp 60 65 Goddu 1997 p 65 Elmer 2006 2007 p 167 sfn error no target CITEREFElmer2006 2007 help Gura 2013 pp 43 46 Richter 2003 p 246 Watts 2012 pp 212 213 Goddu 1997 p 66 Richter 2003 p 247 quoting Logan a b Goddu 1997 p 53 Welch 2021 p 486 Elmer 2006 2007 pp 160 163 sfn error no target CITEREFElmer2006 2007 help Pethers 2012 p 10 a b Fleischmann 1983 p 246 Fleischmann 2012 p 252 Lease 1972 p 91 Fleischmann 1983 p 249 Lease amp Lang 1978 p xvii Goddu 1997 p 67 a b Gura 2013 p 44 Neal 1822a p 216 Pethers 2012 pp 8 9 Pethers 2012 p 8 quoting Logan s preface Merlob 2012 p 102 Welch 2021 pp 471 472 Welch 2021 p 484 Goddu 1997 pp 53 55 Sivils 2012 pp 42 45 Lease 1972 pp 90 91 Sears 1978 p 43 Sivils 2012 p 42 Goddu 1997 p 64 Goddu 1997 pp 60 72 Loshe 1958 p 93 Goddu 1997 p 59 Martin 1959 p 470 a b Elmer 2006 2007 p 154 sfn error no target CITEREFElmer2006 2007 help Elmer 2006 2007 p 167 quoting Logan sfn error no target CITEREFElmer2006 2007 help Goddu 1997 pp 62 66 Welch 2021 p 483 Watts amp Carlson 2012b p xxv Cowie 1948 p 251 Sears 1978 p 44 quoting Neal Lease 1972 p 90 Fleischmann 1983 p 251 Sivils 2012 pp 42 45 Fleischmann 1983 pp 5 8 Goddu 1997 p 61 Richards 1933 pp 329 330 Goddu 1997 p 60 Richards 1933 p 327 Richards 1933 p 329n4 quoting Neal Fleischmann 1983 p 147 Richards 1933 pp 322 323 Lease 1972 p 22 Sears 1978 p 56 quoting Neal Sears 1978 p 34 Richards 1933 pp 90n1 196 197 a b c d Richards 1933 p 323 Sears 1978 p 39 Sears 1978 p 40 Sears 1978 pp 146 147 Gallant 2012 p 1 Martin 1959 pp 457 458 a b Cowie 1948 p 166 Jackson 1907 p 521 Sears 1978 p 105 Elmer 2012 p 150 quoting Neal Richter 2012 p 79 Neal 1971 Title page Neal 1840 Title page Lease 1972 p 40 quoting letters from the publishers to Neal Nelson 1998 p 90 Richards 1933 p 323 Sears 1978 p 133n14 Sears 1978 p 44 Goddu 1997 p 175n12 Richards 1933 pp 324 325 Sears 1978 pp 40 44 Lease amp Lang 1978 p xiv a b Lease 1972 p 41 quoting Stephen Simpson Lease 1972 p 39 Cairns 1922 p 150 quoting The Literary Gazette Richards 1933 p 325 Richards 1933 pp 324 325 Cairns 1922 p 208 quoting Magazine of Foreign Literature a b Goddu 1997 p 62 Goddu 1997 p 61 quoting Seventy Six Goddu 1997 pp 174 175n11 quoting Randolph Sears 1978 p 44 quoting Blackwood s Magazine Sears 1978 p 40 quoting Neal s autobiography a b Cowie 1948 p 168 Richards 1933 p 347 Richards 1933 p 340 Fleischmann 1983 p 251 Lease 1972 pp 86 90 106 Spiller et al 1963 p 291 Pattee 1937 p 5 Richards 1933 pp 334 335 Richards 1933 pp 325 326 Quinn 1964 p 48 Goddu 1997 p 60 Gura 2013 p 43 Fleischmann 1983 p 242 Sources Edit Cairns William B 1922 British Criticisms of American Writings 1815 1833 A Contribution to the Study of Anglo American Literary Relationships University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature Number 14 Madison Wisconsin University of Wisconsin OCLC 1833885 Cowie Alexander 1948 The Rise of the American Novel New York City New York American Book Company OCLC 268679 DiMercurio Catherine C ed 2018 Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism Criticism of the Works of Novelists Philosophers and Other Creative Writers Who Died between 1800 and 1899 from the First Published Critical Appraisals to Current Evaluations Farmington Hills Michigan Gale A Cengage Company ISBN 9781410378514 Elmer Jonathan Fall 2006 Spring 2007 Melancholy Race and Sovereign Exemption in Early American Fiction NOVEL A Forum on Fiction 40 1 2 151 170 doi 10 1215 ddnov 040010151 JSTOR 40267688 Elmer Jonathan 2012 John Neal and John Dunn Hunter John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture pp 145 157 In Watts amp Carlson 2012a Fleischmann Fritz 1983 A Right View of the Subject Feminism in the Works of Charles Brockden Brown and John Neal Erlangen Germany Verlag Palm amp Enke Erlangen ISBN 9783789601477 Fleischmann Fritz 2012 Chapter 12 A Right Manly Man in 1843 John Neal on Women s Rights and the Problem of Male Feminism John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture pp 247 270 In Watts amp Carlson 2012a Gallant Cliff July 13 2012 The Churlish and Brilliant John Neal The Portland Daily Sun Portland Maine pp 1 5 Goddu Theresa A 1997 Gothic America Narrative History and Nation New York City New York Columbia University Press ISBN 9780231108171 Gura Philip F 2013 Truth s Ragged Edge The Rise of the American Novel New York City New York Farrar Straus and Giroux ISBN 9780809094455 Jackson Charles E July 1907 Maine Charitable Mechanic Association Pine Tree Magazine Vol 7 no 6 Portland Maine Sale Publishing Co pp 515 523 Lease Benjamin 1972 That Wild Fellow John Neal and the American Literary Revolution Chicago Illinois University of Chicago Press ISBN 9780226469690 Lease Benjamin Lang Hans Joachim eds 1978 The Genius of John Neal Selections from His Writings Las Vegas Nevada Peter Lang ISBN 9783261023827 Loshe Lillie Deming 1958 1907 The Early American Novel 1789 1830 New York City New York Frederick Ungar Publishing Co OCLC 269646 Merlob Maya 2012 Celebrated Rubbish John Neal and the Commercialization of Early American Romanticism John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture pp 99 122 In Watts amp Carlson 2012a Martin Harold C December 1959 The Colloquial Tradition in the Novel John Neal The New England Quarterly 32 4 455 475 doi 10 2307 362501 JSTOR 362501 Neal John 1822a Logan a Family History Vol 1 Philadelphia Pennsylvania H C Carey amp I Lea OCLC 12207199 Neal John 1822b Logan a Family History Vol 2 Philadelphia Pennsylvania H C Carey amp I Lea OCLC 12207199 Neal John 1840 Logan the Mingo Chief A Family History London England J Cunningham OCLC 11243702 Neal John 1971 Seventy Six Bainbridge New York York Mail Print Inc OCLC 40318310 Facsimile reproduction of 1823 Baltimore edition two volumes in one Nelson Dana D 1998 National Manhood Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men Durham North Carolina Duke University Press ISBN 9780822321491 Pattee Fred Lewis ed 1937 American Writers A Series of Papers Contributed to Blackwood s Magazine 1824 1825 Durham North Carolina Duke University Press OCLC 464953146 Pethers Matthew 2012 I Must Resemble Nobody John Neal Genre and the Making of American Literary Nationalism John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture pp 1 38 In Watts amp Carlson 2012a Quinn Arthur Hobson 1964 1936 American Fiction An Historical and Critical Survey Students ed New York City New York Appleton Century Crofts Inc OCLC 610879015 Richards Irving T 1933 The Life and Works of John Neal PhD Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University OCLC 7588473 Richter Jorg Thomas 2003 Originally published in Colonial Encounters Essays in Early American History and Culture Heidelberg Germany Universitatsverlag Winter pp 157 172 Exemplary American Logan the Mingo Chief in Jefferson Neal and Doddridge Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism Criticism of the Works of Novelists Philosophers and Other Creative Writers Who Died between 1800 and 1899 from the First Published Critical Appraisals to Current Evaluations pp 241 249 In DiMercurio 2018 Richter Jorg Thomas 2012 Notes on Poetic Push Pin and the Writing of Life in John Neal s Authorship John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture pp 75 97 In Watts amp Carlson 2012a Sears Donald A 1978 John Neal Boston Massachusetts Twayne Publishers ISBN 978 0 8057 7230 2 Sivils Matthew Wynn 2012 Chapter 2 The Herbage of Death Haunted Environments in John Neal and James Fenimore Cooper John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture pp 39 56 In Watts amp Carlson 2012a Spiller Robert E Thorp Willard Johnson Thomas H Canby Henry Seidel Ludwig Richard M eds 1963 The Literary History of the United States History 3rd ed London England The Macmillan Company OCLC 269181 Watts Edward 2012 He Could Not Believe that Butchering Red Men Was Serving Our Maker David Whicher and the Indian Hater Tradition John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture pp 209 226 In Watts amp Carlson 2012a Watts Edward Carlson David J eds 2012a John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture Lewisburg Pennsylvania Bucknell University Press ISBN 9781611484205 Watts Edward Carlson David J 2012b Introduction John Neal and Nineteenth Century American Literature and Culture pp xi xxxiv In Watts amp Carlson 2012a Welch Ellen Bufford 2021 Literary Nationalism and the Renunciation of the British Gothic Tradition in the Novels of John Neal Early American Literature 56 2 471 497 doi 10 1353 eal 2021 0039 S2CID 243142175 External links EditLogan a Family History 1822 Philadelphia edition at the Internet Archive Logan a Family History 1822 Philadelphia edition available at Hathitrust Logan a Family History 1823 London edition available at Google Books in four volumes volume 1 volume 2 volume 3 volume 4 Logan the Mingo Chief A Family History 1840 London edition available at Hathitrust Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Logan novel amp oldid 1135626190, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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