10 h 33 minAudiobook12 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 10 h 33 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Beneath an elm tree, a sleepwalker digs and weeps where a murdered man once lay.
Edgar Huntly cannot leave his friend Waldegrave’s murder unexplained. Writing to Mary Waldegrave, his betrothed and the dead man’s sister, he describes a search that begins with a strange sight in the dark. The sleepwalker is Clithero Edny, an Irish servant whose troubled past seems to promise an answer.
In Charles Brockden Brown’s Gothic novel, the Pennsylvania frontier takes the place of haunted castles. Edgar’s pursuit leads from a farming district into caves, cliffs, and forest. As danger draws him onward, his faith in his own reason becomes part of the mystery. What can he trust when his own mind offers no firm ground?
What you’ll discover
- A mystery beneath the elm Follow Edgar toward the stranger he believes can explain his close friend’s violent death.
- A sleepwalker’s hidden burden Meet Clithero, whose secret past in Ireland gives Edgar fresh reasons to pursue him.
- Gothic terror close to home Enter a landscape of caves and forests where the wilderness replaces the haunted castle.
- A mind beyond certainty Explore the uneasy gap between Edgar’s good intentions and impulses he cannot fully understand.
- A letter shaped by grief Feel the urgency of Edgar’s account to Mary, whose brother’s murder sets everything in motion.
Who will love it
For readers who love Gothic suspense, early American fiction, and stories of sleepwalking, murder, and the mysteries of the human mind.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A letter written to a grieving woman
- A sleepwalker digs beneath the elm
- Clithero tells the story of his guilt
- Edgar cannot leave the matter alone
- Waking in the dark with no memory
- Survival turns a scholar into a fighter
- The frontier and its violence
- What the book says about reason and the self
- How the book is told and why it lasted
Who’s who
- Edgar HuntlyA young Pennsylvania farmer and the narrator, who seeks his murdered friend's killer and is troubled by sleepwalking and by his own impulses.
- Clithero EdnyAn Irish servant who walks in his sleep and carries a heavy secret from his past in Ireland.
- Mary WaldegraveEdgar's betrothed and the sister of the murdered man, to whom the whole story is written as a letter.
- WaldegraveEdgar's close friend, found murdered near an elm tree, whose death sets the whole story in motion.
- SarsefieldEdgar's former teacher and friend, who returns from Europe and is bound up in Clithero's history.
- Mrs. LorimerThe Irish benefactor of Clithero, whose kindness and family troubles shape his flight to America.
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- Audiobook
- 10 h 33 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 12 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Edgar Huntly, o Memorie di un sonnambulo
by Charles Brockden Brown · 1799
Edgar follows a sleepwalker beneath an elm to solve his friend's murder, venturing into wilderness and his own mind.
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In short
Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker is a novel by Charles Brockden Brown, published in 1799 in Philadelphia. Brown was one of the first American writers to make a living from fiction.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A letter written to a grieving woman
Edgar Huntly begins his story by explaining that he is writing to Mary Waldegrave, who lives at some distance from him. He says he has a great deal to tell her, and that his mind is still unsettled by what he has seen and done. From the first page, the reader senses that this is not a calm report. It is the account of a man who needs to put his experience into order before it breaks him.
The cause of it all is the death of Mary's brother, Waldegrave, who was Edgar's close friend. Waldegrave was found murdered in the countryside near Norwalk, in Pennsylvania, close to the Forks of the Delaware River. The killer was never found. The murder left a gap in Edgar's life and in the Waldegrave family, and it left a question hanging over the neighborhood.
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What is Edgar Huntly about?
A young Pennsylvania man tries to find who killed his friend Waldegrave. He sees a servant, Clithero, walking in his sleep near the murder site, follows him into the wilderness, and faces danger and strange states of mind.
Why is the book called Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker?
Sleepwalking appears in both Clithero and Edgar. Brown uses it to show people acting without knowing why, and to ask how well anyone understands his own mind and motives.
When was Edgar Huntly written and is it a true story?
Charles Brockden Brown published it in 1799. It is fiction, though set in a real region of Pennsylvania and shaped by the real fear of frontier conflict in that period.
The author
Charles Brockden Brown
1771–1810 · American novelist and historian
Charles Brockden Brown was an American novelist, historian, and editor. He was born in Philadelphia in 1771 and died there in 1810. He also lived in New York City. His novels include Wieland, published in 1798, and Edgar Huntly, published in 1799. He edited magazines and wrote historical and political works.
More by Charles Brockden Brown
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