... those who gratify it, and it is notable that the first American to make authorship his sole career had already decided for fiction. Charles Brockden Brown came of good Quaker stock long settled in Pennsylvania , where, at Philadelphia, he was born 17 January, 1771. He was a frail, studious child, reputed a prodigy, and encouraged by his parents in that frantic feeding upon books which was expected, in tho...