Modern Chivalry

by Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Lewis Gaston Leary (Editor)

It was only after serving as a chaplain in the American Revolution, playing an important role in the Whiskey Rebellion, and serving (often controversially) on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, that Hugh Henry Brackenridge composed his great comic epic. Published in installments over the twenty-eight–year period beginning with Washington's presidency ending with that of Madison, this irreverent and ribald novel, relating the misadventures of Captain Farrago and his sidekick, Teague O'Regan, leaves no major ethnic, racial, religious, or political issue of the period unscathed.

Genres: Fiction, American, Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1792

About the author

Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748 – June 25, 1816) was an American writer, lawyer, judge, and justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

A frontier citizen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, he founded both the Pittsburgh Academy, now the University of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Gazette, still operating today as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Brackenridge was born in Kintyre, Scotland, a village near Campbeltown. In 1753, when he was 5, his family emigrated to York County, Pennsylvania, near the Maryland border, then a frontier.[1][2] At age 15 he was head of a free school in Maryland. At age 19 he entered the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, where he joined Philip Morin Freneau, James Madison, and others in forming the American Whig Society to counter the conservative Cliosophic, or Tory, Society. (Today these are conjoined as the American Whig–Cliosophic Society.) Freneau and Brackenridge collaborated on a satire on American manners that may be the first work of prose fiction written in America, Father Bombo's Pilgrimage to Mecca .[3] They also wrote The Rising Glory of America, a prophetic poem of a united nation that would rule the North American continent from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Brackenridge recited it at the commencement exercises of 1771.

He corresponded with other politically active men such as Alexander Addison, a major figure in the Whiskey Rebellion.[5][6][7] In 1815 he completed Modern Chivalry, his rambling satirical novel. Widely considered the first important fictional work about the American frontier and called "to the West what Don Quixote was to Europe," the third and fourth sections of the book appeared in 1793 and 1797, and a revision in 1805, with a final addition in 1815. Henry Adams called it "a more thoroughly American book than any written before 1833."

Brackenridge died June 25, 1816 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

The Allegheny County borough of Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, is named for his son, the lawyer, judge, and writer Henry Marie Brackenridge (1786–1871).

Reviews

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

A meandering satire, suggesting democracy is rule by the stupid and corrupt.

[Jonathan Scheuer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modern Chivalry is one of the funniest novels ever written by an American, comparable in quality to Washington Irving's satirical History of New York By Diedrich Knickerbocker, from the same era. Major John Farrago and his manservant Teague are precursors of the best of Mark Twain's heroes. Many much duller novels are considered classics. The neglect of Modern Chivalry is inexplicable.

[David Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A complicated, funny, but sometimes laborious satire and exploration of American democracy and its pitfalls from a simultaneously central and outsider perspective of one of its early proponents. There is a lot of political minutia about very particular controversies relating to judicial impeachments, as well as a fair few moments where Brackenridge clearly just has an axe to grind against his opponents, but overall it’s a fascinating read for someone interested in the state of the republic in its early days.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will 'fess up and admit that I didn't finish this one even though it was for school. I liked the first 30 pages, though...