The novel explores cross-cultural relationships and highlights cultural diversity within the Thirteen Colonies, stressing egalitarianism and challenging the conception of a unified American nation.

Neal wrote the original manuscript while crossing the Atlantic from Baltimore in early 1824, then revised it in London many times before convincing William Blackwood of Edinburgh to publish it in mid-1825.

Considered one of America's top novelists at the time, Neal wrote Brother Jonathan with a British audience in mind in order to boost his reputation internationally.

Abraham lives in the fictional community of Gingertown with his son Walter Harwood, his Virginian niece Edith Cummin, and a mysterious figure named Jonathan Peters.

He gets a job in a counting house and moves into a Quaker household, where he learns that his father has been killed and his family home seized by British Loyalists.

Bald Eagle liberates Walter from enchantment by an Indigenous witch named Hannah, which had been causing his dreams of Jonathan and related suicidal thoughts.

[7] In late November 1823, he was at a dinner party with an English friend who quoted Sydney Smith's then-notorious 1820 remark, "in the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?".

[9] Partly in response to Smith,[10] and drawing on that Revolutionary War research,[11] Neal wrote the first draft of Brother Jonathan while sailing across the Atlantic.

[26] Blackwood refused to publish, partly on account of the novel's sexual content, saying: "it is not fit for young people to read of seduction, brothels, and the abandonment of the sexes.

[43] To that end, he dedicated a great deal of space to scenes of distinctive American cultural events, customs, accents, colloquialisms, dress, cuisine, and characters.

[48] Though Brother Jonathan was initially considered to personify just the New England states, Neal advocated for Americans to accept him as a representation for the entire country.

[51] Once in New York, Walter observes with disgust as wealthy city dwellers at his boarding house clean themselves with a common towel and toothbrush, comb their hair with their fingers, and arrange their collars and cravats to hide wear marks and stains.

[55] According to cultural studies researcher Jörg Thomas Richter, the stage coach that transported Walter to New York also exemplifies this natural American republicanism, as it depicts a curious mix of animals, cargo, and passengers of varying social status, all traveling together.

He also argues that the character on the stage coach smoking a pipe dangerously close to a keg of gunpowder suggests that heterogeneous egalitarianism might have explosive consequences for the nation.

[56] Pointing to other negative consequences of this egalitarianism, Neal depicts a vulgar display from New Yorkers in a Declaration of Independence celebration and poor discipline among Continental troops.

[61] The darker side of these cross-cultural interactions is exemplified by the graveyard in Gingertown as a haunting Gothic symbol for "the legacy of the American colonial project ... fertilized and poisoned with the blood of conquered and the conqueror alike", according to literature scholar Matthew Wynn Sivils.

[66] Scholar Fritz Fleischmann acknowledged the historic importance of the novel's treatment of female virtue, male profligacy, and seduction of women by men, but asserted that Neal failed to craft a successful theme on the topic.

[69] Walter's dialogue in the first volume may be the earliest attempt in American literature to use a child's natural speech patterns to express a wide range of emotion.

The novel's portrayal of Walter's transition to more adult language is described by scholar Harold C. Martin as "the oddest transformation ... in all of American literature".

[86] Most of the positive criticism was qualified by commentary on the novel's shortcomings, such as what The Ladies' Monthly Museum published: "the striking delineations of New England manners are interesting as well as amusing, notwithstanding their coarseness.

[97] Dumfries Monthly Magazine said "'Brother Jonathan' is the first publication of the kind that introduces us to anything like an accurate ... acquaintance with the inhabitants of the great continent – aborigines as well as colonists.

"[98] In a mostly negative review, the British Critic instructed readers to "skip or skim" most of the novel to get to "the vivid and eccentric pictures of American life and character with which it abounds.

[101] David Macbeth Moir claimed Neal demonstrated "a deficiency of just taste in what is proper for the public palate" and declared the novel "unfit for a circle of female readers".

He continued: "Need I allude to such things as elaborate plans for female seduction, or pictures of male profligacy which startle while they astonish, and nauseate while they create interest.

[104] One reviewer for the British Critic described the novel's characters as exaggerated, referring to them as "stalking moody spectres with glaring eyeballs and inflated nostrils, towering above the common height, and exhibiting the play of their muscles and veins through their clothes in the most trivial action".

[107] Moir predicted commercial failure for the book on the grounds that readers had no patience for such a demanding work, saying that Neal is "too fond of making a great deal of every thing".

[102] Neal himself admitted to the novel's excesses, blaming them on his quest for originality: "I, wishing to avoid what is common, am apt to run off into what is not only uncommon, but unnatural, and even absurd.

[88] Commenting on both the novel's power and excesses, Peter George Patmore supposed that if Brother Jonathan was the anonymous author's first work, it was "destined to occupy a permanent place in the very foremost rank of his age's literature. ....

[114] Lease and fellow literature scholars Hans-Joachim Lang and Arthur Hobson Quinn claimed that this level of realism was uniquely high for the early nineteenth century.

[128] Referring to this mix of style experiments, American realism, Gothic devices, and an excessive plot, scholar Alexander Cowie summarized: "To see unity in the vast conglomeration of Brother Jonathan is impossible.