Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) - the “father” of the American novel, the first serious prose writer of the New World, journalist, critic, founder of the Monthly Magazine, Literary Magazine, American Review, author of six novels, the best of which Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker, 1799 is considered. Detective in plot, it is structured as a subtle psychological study with the escalation of horror through a series of mysterious tragic events, organically woven into the realities of the author’s contemporary America. Perfect mastery of the art of creating and maintaining the right mood gives Brown's horrors a frightening believability. A few ominous touches - and the reader is immersed in an atmosphere of the presence of otherworldly forces, which he feels almost physically.