The plot of the first American novel, published in 1789, the same year George Washington was sworn in as the First President of the United States, The Power of Sympathy by William Hill Brown, was not as revered as its author might have hoped. After all, its sensational and scandalous themes of seduction, incest, and even suicide - already too much for the fledging United States society - might actually have been based on Brown's famous Bostonian neighbors.

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