William Hill Brown

William Hill Brown (November 1765 – September 2, 1793) was an American novelist, the author of what is usually considered the first American novel, The Power of Sympathy (1789),[1] and "Harriot, or the Domestic Reconciliation",[2] as well as the serial essay "The Reformer", published in Isaiah Thomas' Massachusetts Magazine.

The book drew close comparison to a local scandal and was subsequently withdrawn from sale.

Around October 1792, Brown himself withdrew to join his sister, Eliza Brown Hinchborne, at the Hinchborne plantation near Murfreesboro, North Carolina, and began to read law with William Richardson Davie at Halifax.

Not yet acclimated to the Eastern North Carolina climate, William Brown died of fever, probably malaria, the following August, at the age of twenty-seven.

[6] Brown held the conviction that novels should aim at some high moral purpose.